The Three Kings: Hunt
by AlcatrazOutpatient
Summary: To the Wizarding community, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin are considered to be the greatest witches and wizards of their age. To that of the Mage society, they are known as the instigators of the largest genocide in recorded history. Rule 65!Atem, bisexual polyamorous relationship, massive AU, warnings inside
1. A History of Magic

**The Three Kings: The Hunt**

**Disclaimer: **_Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters_ is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. _Harry Potter_ is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. _Merlin_ is owned by Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Johnny Capps, Julian Murphy, Shine Television, and BBC One. Please support the official releases.

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**Prologue: A History of Magic**

It ended, as it always did, at Hogwarts.

But the war had been raging for centuries beforehand and would for almost a millennia afterwards, so it was difficult to say if the great battle that took place that day truly ended anything. Perhaps it was more of a defining moment in history – a pin on the very map that was time. And yet, even that was a debatable statement, as the truth was covered up and altered to fit the stories of the victors. To put them in a better light. To turn them into heroes, into legends, into myth.

To the Wizarding community, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin were considered to be the greatest witches and wizards of their age. To that of the Mage society, they were known as the instigators of the largest genocide in recorded history.

However, to truly understand what occurred that fateful day, one must learn of a past that was never allowed to become history. Of a time when there were no mages or wizards and magic had just been gifted to the humans that walked the earth. So while it ended, as it always did, at Hogwarts, it began, as it always did, in Ancient Egypt. It started with four great gods, a book bound in human skin, and a set of twin boys.

The story of these boys starts out simple enough. They were born to the Pharaoh through his Chief Wife and destined to live forever in royalty and luxury. The eldest, named Aknamkanon would become Pharaoh after his father's death, and the younger, Aknadin, would enter priesthood and serve the gods dutifully for the rest of his life. But a tale that would have such an impact on the course of human history could not remain this simple for very long.

After the birthing, the royal midwife made a grave error: she forgot which boy had been born first. Fearful for her soul, she told the Pharaoh of her mistake in hopes that her honesty would save her in the afterlife. The Pharaoh responded that there was a way to test the children to discover which one was the eldest.

"Which ever one cries the loudest is my first born son," he declared, and so it was. The one on the right was proclaimed to be the heir Aknamkanon and the one on the left became the priest Aknadin. The two children were forbidden from ever learning the truth, but like all secrets, it eventually came to light.

By this time, Aknamkanon sat on the throne of Egypt and had already taken a wife of his own. Aknadin was furious, convinced that his brother had stolen his true birth right and claim. He broke his priestly vows of celibacy and, in rebellion, took to his bed a married noble woman who would give him a son. He discovered his talent for magic, a relatively new thing amongst the Egyptian people and a completely unheard of trait to the rest of the ancient world, and began to practice.

In time, he discovered the Great Gods of life and magic. They transcended the sun, moon, and water deities upheld by the people of the earth. They were The Mother and The Father. They were Chaos and Order. And they were not to be trifled with.

The Mother and The Father were darkness and light. They were neither good nor evil, simply existing as they were. They watched and observed the goings on of the minor gods of the world, hardly ever stepping in to solve disputes unless it wa absolutely necessary. To Aknadin, they were useless.

To accomplish what he wanted, he needed a divine backing. So he ignored The Mother of Darkness and The Father of Light and concentrated on their younger siblings: Zorc the Destroyer and Horakhty the Creator.

These two gods represented the extremes of the world, constantly batting back and forth with each other for domination. Their powers increased and decreased depending on those that followed them and all it took was a single person to tip the balance of the scale. Aknadin was that one person.

They fought for his support, trying to convince him that their powers would be what he needed to take his rightful place on the throne. Eventually, Zorc created the Millennium Spellbook, containing all the secrets of magic that could and ever would exist. Aknadin made a contract with The Destroyer, pledging his life and soul to the god. In return, Zorc would come to his aid if ever summoned into the world.

The tides of war would soon change in his favour as an invading army attacked the mighty Egyptian Empire. Try as he might, Aknamkanon could not secure a victory and there was talk of rebellion amongst his people. The Pharaoh turned to his brother, begging for support and promising reinstatement amongst the priesthood if Aknadin were to provide an answer to his problem. Seeing his chance, the Destroyer's follower suggested to use the Millennium Spellbook to create seven mythical items that would provide them with great magical powers, enough to destroy the enemy. Secretly, Aknadin planned to use these items to make himself a hero in the eyes of the people and then turn them on his brother once and for all.

But it was in that moment that The Mother and The Father opened their divine eyes and saw what would become of the future if Zorc and Aknadin were allowed to continue their plans unchecked. So, secretly, they chose three children and prepared to gift them with powers previously unknown to humanity. They were to be given the abilities of gods.

The seven Millennium Items could only be created out of death and blood. Aknadin knew this and chose to sacrifice the small, outlying village of Kul Elna to bring them into this world. The inhabitants were poor and starving, often resulting to thievery in order to survive. In the mind of the Destroyer's follower, they were wicked and evil and did not deserve a place in his soon-to-be Empire.

He fell upon these helpless people with an army provided to him by his patron god. Aknadin drove the people of Kul Elna into one of their crypts and killed them all – a grand total of ninety-nine men, women, and children. Their bodies were melted into gold under the instruction of the Millennium Spellbook and the seven items were formed.

However, there were whispers that Aknadin had missed a single soul that night. A boy of five years of age watched as his family was slaughtered and the Destroyer's follower proclaimed himself to be the true Pharaoh. This boy would grow up to become the Thief King.

Upon his return home, Aknadin was surprised and outraged to hear that Aknamkanon's wife had finally given birth to a living child. This girl held within her the key to the entire kingdom, the power of Pharaoh. This girl would eventually become the Lady Pharaoh.

The battle against the invading forces ended just as swiftly as Aknadin had expected, though not in the way that he had planned it. Upon presenting the Millennium Items to his brother after returning from Kul Elna, Aknamkanon refused to let Aknadin wield them all on his own. The Pharaoh distributed them amongst their own half-siblings, taking the pyramid-shaped Pendant of Unity as his own and leaving Aknadin with the Eye of Thought. They fought their enemy in the village of Deir El-Medna and were assisted by the people who lived there.

As thanks, Aknamkanon awarded the leader of the village a place in the royal household and entrusted him with Karim's raising. Fearing that the man would use his new influence to claim power over the Empire, Aknadin attacked the man's only son with the power of the Eye of Thought. This boy would eventually become the King Commander.

For his crimes, Aknadin was banished and sent far away. He stole the Eye away from his brother, who planned to lock the Millennium Items away out of fear of their abilities, taking it into exile with him.

Many years passed. The girl became learned in the arts of magic and ruling, the thief boy came to the city to earn his pay with light fingers, and the boy from Deir El-Medna was trained as a warrior of the Medjay. Aknamkanon would learn of the slaughter in Kul Elna and fall gravely ill out of grief, sparking a series of events that would cause the three children to meet. At first, they would not know each other's identities, but when the truth came out, it was only the Pharaoh's quick thinking that would save their friendship.

But Aknamkanon passed in battle during the girl's fourteenth year, sparking the girl to fight and claim her right to the throne. Quite by coincidence - or, perhaps, it wasn't at all, considering that The Mother and The Father were watching over them – that night the boy from Kul Elna would be forced to smother his predecessor in his sleep, while the boy from Deir El-Medna watched his Commander die in the field. The three would rise to their stations as one and, unlike in the years previous, would rule together. All the people of Egypt would, for the first time in history, cooperate.

But the Destroyer's chosen would return, bringing with him a great and powerful army. During the battle that would ensue, the Three Kings would don the Millennium Items in order to combat their enemy. The Lady Pharaoh would wear her father's Pennant of Unity, the Thief King would hang the Ring of Souls around his neck, and the King Commander would wield the Rod of Thought. The Necklace of Time would choose a priestess to hold its owner, while the Key of Minds would gift itself to the Dragon Princess of the Medjay. Finally, the Scale of Intent would fall into the hands of Jono the Brave, then a young street rat with not but a dull knife to his name.

And the three courts would, for the first time, fight as one to stop Aknadin and Zorc. Many would fall, but none in a more terrible fashion than the Kings themselves. Faced with annihilation, these three took it upon themselves to seal the Destroyer away at the cost of their lives. Their existences were wiped from history and their names were forgotten to all that knew them.

Those that survived The Time of Millennia would become the first to begin the worship of these three, spreading word that they would one day return to rule once more. The Items that they wore – the Pendant, the Rod, and the Ring – would be hidden away in anticipation of this event. High Priest Seth would become the next Pharaoh and rule beside the Dragon Princess and Jono the Brave. Together they would guard the Millennium Spellbook, which still contained such incredible power that it would be unwise to let it be seen by the rest of the world.

Time would continue on and the years would pass. Several thousand years after The Time of Millennia, tension would brew again. There would be a growing fraction of people who disliked the idea of such a power such as magic being given out, seemingly, at random by forces that they would not see or prove to exist. They wanted to possess it permanently within their families. And so it was that three brothers created a way to force the gods to bend to their will.

Cadmus Peverell, the middle brother, was the sole sibling with magical talent – a mage, by modern-day definition. He specialized in the art of necromancy and created a terrible stone that could open the barrier between this world and the next, forcing the dead to cross back over from their rest in the afterlife. He revived one of the Priests that had lived during The Time of Millennia: the half-brother of the Lady Pharaoh, Priest Shada.

Cadmus forced Shada to tell him of the Millennium Items and the secrets of their creation. But the priest's spirit fought and broke the control that the Resurrection Stone had over him, severing his connection to the Realm of Death and cursing him to aimlessly wonder the earth. However, the damage was done and Cadmus now knew how to give his brothers magic.

By soaking the wood from an Elder tree in the blood of fourteen women and imbuing it with the essence of Death's horse, Cadmus created the first wand for his elder brother, Antioch. This wand became known as the Wand of Destiny, as it was so powerful that it could make the gods tremble at the very though of it turning upon them. In retaliation, Jupiter, Minerva, and Mercury, the gods of Rome and its Empire, cried for help to come from The Mother and The Father, as it had come in The Time of Millennia – bit it was to no avail. The third and final brother, Ignotus, created a cloak of invisibility that could shield the three brothers from even their eyes.

Using these three items, forever dubbed the Deathly Hallows for the destruction that their existence would bring, the three Peverell brothers started the movement amongst certain noble families to become wizards and witches. They offered a way to control magic in a way that had never been seen before and granted them whatever power they wanted. They could keep it within their families and ensure success for the rest of time.

There was controversy about this, as was to be expected. There were those who opposed this control of magic, claiming it to be thief or blasphemy. At the same time, there were those rebelled at the idea of waiting to be ruled by the Three Kings, who, by this time, were nothing more than fairytales. In the meantime, wizard numbers began to increase drastically and they began to attack those who clung to the old way of doing things.

However, either wizard or mage did not take first blood in this war. The current king of Camelot, a man named Uther Pendragon from the island of Britannia, had had enough of the religions of magic and made it his duty to try and destroy both sides. Several other kings took up his call to arms and thus the Purge began.

At the same time, a witch by the mane of Nimueh prophesized hat Uther's son, Arthur, would bring magic back to Camelot. Both sides of magic sent their best to try and convince the Prince to support their side. The great and powerful Merlin represented the wand users and the Lady Morgana came from the games. But what happened was something that no one ever thought possible.

Merlin and Morgana began to share their ideas of magic with each other. They spoke commonly with one another, learning and eventually falling in love with each other. They married on the eve of Arthur's coronation and it was decided that both sides of magic would exist as equals in Camelot.

The mages were content with this agreement and, in a show of good will, presented the Millennium Spellbook and two of the mythical Millennium Items, the Thief King's Ring of Souls and Aknadin's Eye of Thought, to the new King Arthur Pendragon. Not wanting to be outdone, but in no way please with the idea of shaping power, the wizards sent their four best and brightest: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.

For ten years King Arthur reigned, but the hostility between the mages and wizards only seemed to increase. Merlin, though widely accepted as being incredibly powerful, was being pulled back and forth between his people and his wife. Morgan often felt threatened by Salazar, who had taken to following her around the castle. The skirmishes that had caused Uther's Purges began to occur once more and, at the same time, the wizards began to distrust the non-magical peoples of the world, as they seemed to be siding with the mages.

The fighting broke out openly once more when Godric's only child, his son named Baltazar, attempted to don the Ring of Souls. He was burned from the inside out, to the point where he was almost unrecognizable to even his father. Striken with grief, Godric turned on Morgana's family, killing her sister's son, Mordred – a boy of fourteen. Morgan and her sister, Morgause, retaliated and cursed him to have all those whom he loved to turn away from him in death.

War was declared and mages and wizards battled plainly for the first time. Merlin's marriage fell apart when he refused to side with his wife and attack his own people. Instead, he stayed neutral and evacuated the city of Camelot when the fighting got too close for the citizens to live their safely anymore. Salazar and Rowena took King Arthur by surprise at the Battle of Camhalnn, killing him and his Knights of the Round Table. Queen Guinevere was spirited away by Nimueh in the middle of the night and was never seen again.

In the grounds of the deserted castle, Morgana and Morgause fought Godric, Helga, Rowena, and Salazar. The battle carved a great ravine in the land, which willed with water to form a lake with depths that would reach the Underworld itself. It seemed at one point that a victor would never prevail. But Helga Hufflepuff turned the tides, quite unexpectedly. She had stolen the Millennium Spellbook and opened a portal to the Realm of the Gods. She revealed that, in that very moment, her husband, Emeric, was marching on the gods with the Wand of Destiny. The deities that the mages had held so dearly were brought to their knees and killed. Mages lost their grip on the world and retreated as Morgana and Morgause fell at the Lake of Avalon.

Now with Camelot empty and ripe for the taking, the four conquering witches and wizards took it for their own. They decided to use it as a school to teach their own kind, to ensure wizard domination over magic for the rest of time. They encouraged other countries to rise up and cast the mages out and assert their right to rule as well, instead of waiting for the mythical Three Kings to return from the dead. And thus the Mage Hunts and the rise of blood purity began.

Those known today by the wizarding community as 'muggleborns' or, more offensively, mudbloods, are not the result of random genetic mutation – the Peverell brothers made sure that the wizarding ability for magic could only be passed down a family tree. However, due to the fact that they, for all intents and purposes, enslaved magic inside the first wizards, there were bound to be anomalies that would occur – like Squibs, persons of wizard descent who could not preform magic. Squibs were usually abandoned by their families, thrown into the non-magical world, and force to make due. It is from Squibs that those of non-magical decent got their magic. Somewhere along the line, the recessive gene became dominant and a young witch or wizard was born to a non-magic family.

The problem with 'muggleborns' was that, in their infancy, it was almost impossible to tell whether they were of wizard-kind or if they were mages. Only if the child were to show signs of random, uncontrolled, wandless magic could it be confirmed that it was in fact a wizard. This created a fear and prejudice towards non-magics and their magic weilding offspring in general for birthing them, because the idea of mages infiltrating wizarding society was more than terrifying, as the mages had good reason to want to tear their world down from the inside.

The practice of 'muggle hunting' originally came from the older tradition of mage hunting. If a mage was suspected to have been born into a non-magical family, than it was the job of the nearest wizarding family to kill the child and its parents. This practice was extremely successful and, as a result, the mage population dwindled to the point of near extinction. This eventually translated into a fear and hatred of non-magics themselves as well as the rising idea of wizarding superiority.

It was this ideology that led to the witch hunts by non-magics in the fifteenth century and the creation of the International Statute of Secrecy in 1689. Rather than attempt to co-operate and negotiate with non-magics, wizard-kind rejected them and formed their own society outside of their laws and jurisdiction. The re-writing of wizard history began by the newly created Ministry of Magic and mages were wiped from the pages. Heroes were made of murderers and murderers were made of heroes. And, for nearly two hundred years, wizard-kind was left to revel in its own secretly assumed superiority.

And then the impossible happened: a mage was born into a wizard family. Such a case was unprecedented and covered up almost as soon as it was discovered to be truth. The international force that was the Department of Mysteries was tasked with containing the problem that was Ariana Dumbledore as the usual method of killing the girl and her family would not go unnoticed by the world, especially with her genius brother, Albus, slowly making a name for himself. Ariana's mother, Kendra, was instructed to hide her away from the world and not to let her practice her magic in the hopes that it would simply go away. This led Ariana to have several uncontrollable outbursts of magic, on of which ended up killing her mother.

When it became clear that Ariana could no longer be controlled, it was arranged by the Department of Mysteries to have her secretly assassinated. The opportunity came during the three-way duel between her two brothers, Albus and Aberforth, and Gellert Grindelwald. She was struck with the killing curse from behind and left for dead. It was assumed by those that knew of her existence that that would be the end of wizardborn mages. They were wrong.

In the 1900s, there were several hundred documented cases of mages being born into wizard families across the globe. Unspeakables everywhere were scrambling for some sort of explanation. They turned to the three mage items that were in their possession: the Ring of Souls, the Eye of Minds, and the Millennium Spellbook, studying them for the first time since the time of Camelot.

What they found was petrifying: the Millennium Spellbook had prophesied that the return of the Three Kings was coming soon. The International Confederation of Wizards was notified and it was declared that the Unspeakables where to stop this at any cost and to, most of all, keep it quiet. They were authorized to use any force necessary to accomplish this task. It was this fear that caused the Confederation to ignore Grindelwald's rise to power until it was far too late to stop him. If the Kings were to somehow come back to life, the mages and their gods would return to take back their power. And, worst of all, wizards would lose their claim to domination.

Nothing that the Unspeakables could do would destroy the Ring of Souls, said to be somehow instrumental in the return of the Thief King. They searched the earth far and wide for signs of the other Millennium Items, though ere only able to find the tomb were the Pendant of Unity was said to be hidden. None that entered ever came out alive, so it was considered guarded enough that mages would not be able to get at it to revive the Lady Pharaoh. However, the complete lack of knowledge surrounding the location of the Rod of Thought was troublesome. If the mages were able to bring back the King Commander, said to be the fiercest warrior in all of history, there would be no doubt that this man could raise and army to take back the Items in wizarding possession.

But they also had other things to worry about, like the ever-growing problem of wizardborn mages. Hiding them away was only a short-term solution to a long-term issue and having a parent agree to have their child killed was a surprisingly difficult thing to convince them to do. However, a young recruit to the Unspeakables, an American pureblood named Maximillion Pegasus, developed the idea of conversion therapy: the idea of treating mage magic like an illness. He hypothesized that it could be possible to turn them, over time, into proper wizards. He tested his theory out on the wizardborn mage, Gilderoy Lockhart, and then duplicate the results on the young witch-to-be, Andromeda Black. And thus it became common practice amongst pureblood families that had to deal with the shame of having birthed a mage to simply have their children cure of their wrongness. Maximillion was promoted to head of the global Unspeakable department and put in charge of the prevention of the return of the Three Kings. His ground-breaking research made it possible to regain wizarding control on the mages around the world.

However, every so often, there would be a child who would reject the program and seek to live as a mage. The story of the Three Kings started with such a child: a fifteen-year-old boy from the Andrews family. His name was Ryou and it ended for him, as it always did, at Hogwarts.

But you know what they say about endings: they just give way to new beginnings.

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**Um...so I have an explanation for this. Maybe. Sort of.**

**Merry Christmas?**

**So, I haven't updated in forever. I'm really, really sorry about that but school and work is taking up all of my time. I'm still trying to write The Others series, but it's going slowly. ****_Very slowly_****. But it is still in the works.**

**Meanwhile, I've been working on this for a very long time, on and off over the years. And I thought, ****_what the hell,_**** it's Christmas. I might as well post it and see what people think.**

**Okay, so background information about this series: it's a Harry Potter x Yu-Gi-Oh! DM crossover, but only on technicality. It's really just a massive AU with YGO and HP elements. It doesn't focus as much on the life of Harry Potter, though he and a few others will be making some cameos. The Three Kings series takes more of a look at the whole wizarding culture: the rampant pureblood superiority and how it would be effected if there was more than one type of magic.**

**On the HP side of things, we'll be looking mostly at the Department of Mysteries, which in this fic is a large international organization that has branches in each wizarding government. The HP timeline has been pushed back, so that instead of Philosopher's Stone taking place in 1991, it is around our present day when it occurs.**

**As for the YGO half of the crossover, the main pairing will be Rule 63!Pharaoh Atem x Thief King Bakura x Marik Ishtar. As far as I can tell, there is no ship name for this. It's going to be a fully functional, bisexual, polyamorous relationship. Bakura, because I love him to pieces, is probably going to end up being the main character, though not the main view point character. And yes, I've switched Atem's gender again, because I honestly cannot see her as anything else besides female. It's weird and I've long since come to terms with it.**

**_Hunt_**** is going to be the equivalent to season 0, though there probably won't be a lot of references to the events of the manga or original anime. I'll try to fit a few in, if I can. We'll meet up with Atem by the end of ****_Hunt_****. Her story will be the main focus of ****_Strike. _****Sadly, Marik isn't going to be showing up (outside of a few cameos) for a while. He'll be in ****_Resist, _****though you might not recognize what I've done to him. **

**So, hopefully you guys like this and I'll see you all soon.**

**AlcatrazOutpatient**


	2. Beginning and End

**The Three Kings: Hunt**

**Disclaimer: **_Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters _is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. _Harry Potter_ is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

**Warning:** Anorexia, depression, self-hatred, attempted suicide, homophobia, biphobia, incest, dub-con, abuse, and slight gore.

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**Chapter 1: Beginning and End**

Keith Howard knows Ryou Andrews for nearly five years before the boy dies.

They first meet just before the boy starts his first year at Hogwarts, in the foyer of his family's home in Edinburgh. Ryou is days away from turning eleven and is holding the hand of his little sister with a desperate ferocity that makes him think of his own siblings back in Nashville. He's small for a kid his age, thin in the way that most British wizards seemed to be. They're dressed impeccably, as is expected by pure bloods. Ryou's black hair is neatly pulled back into a horsetail at the back of his neck, showing off the clenching of his jaw. The boy is scared and angry, but mostly tired in a way that was too old for a boy his age. Keith remembers that the most about Ryou – the idea that he looks older than he actually is.

He's been an Unspeakable for just over eight years now, but he's only recently been moved to the unit in charge of mage conversions. Ryou Andrews is his first assignment as part of this team. It's a test from his superiors to see if he can handle the pressure. Keith knows that it's a huge investment; he's going to be on call, twenty-four seven, for the next seven years. It's going to be work, but even a single successful conversion can boost an Unspeakable's career to the point where he'll be able to retire in half the usual time. Keith doesn't want to now too many secrets. He doesn't want to give the head honchos a reason to want to kill him when this is all over. He wants to _enjoy_ his retirement.

He read Ryou's file while waiting in the Portkey Office in New York. The kid's a mage alright – and a pretty damn powerful one for his age, too. He's been walking through walls since he was eight years old and gained complete control of the ability a year and a half later. His father, James Andrews, made the identification. Keith had met James previously; the man was an instrumental asset in the Lakewood case a few years back and is one of the few experts on mage culture that the Department of Mysteries has even allowed to exist. Having a mage for a son would have hit the man hard and right in his pride.

Keith remembers sitting this little kid down and explaining that the things that he is able to do were wrong, that he is ill and in need of help.

"Don't worry, okay. That's why I'm here. I'm gonna help you get better," he tells Ryou. The boy stares at him for a moment with his pale blue eyes.

"But how come I don't feel sick?" He asks.

"Sometimes, when you're really sick for a long time, you forget what it's like to feel normal," Keith smiles.

Ryou blinks, "Have you ever been sick like I am?"

"No."

"Then how do you know what it feels like?"

Training hadn't prepared him for that question, so he makes up an answer, "I just do."

The kid looks at him in that moment, pins Keith to the earth with just his eyes, and he realizes that he's sitting in front of a god damn mage who has the power to reach into his body and yank out his lungs. He's been on hunts before. He knows what mages can do when threatened, even the young ones like Ryou. Keith had once seen a fourteen-year-old girl from Oklahoma strangle a man with the vines from a window plant while wearing a jean skirt and a Katy Perry t-shirt. By the time they'd calibrated the Mage Cuffs to her powers, that little girl had torn the man to pieces. There wasn't even enough to bury him. They'd had to scrape what was left of him from the ceiling.

They put her down like a rapid dog. And Keith knows that if he can't help Ryou, they'll have to do the same to him, too.

Keith's job is to keep Ryou sane over the course of the next seven years. Conversion therapy could get…intense at times. The kid would need someone to talk to because studies showed that ex-mages don't _ever_ mention their status to their classmates – not if they want to keep their friends, in any case. But Keith thinks that Ryou will do well in the program. He'll make a good wizard.

They talk for a little while afterwards. He explains that he works for the American Ministry when Ryou asks why he talks 'funny', that he was recommended by his boss for this assignment. Ryou talks about his sister, Amane, the most and he kind of thinks it's cute. She seems to be his whole world, regardless of the nearly five-year gap between their ages. The little girl loves to paint, which is an odd thing for a witch to like – or, at least, he hopes that Amane Andrews is a witch. He doesn't think that James would be too impressed at the idea of having two mage kids.

He gets on the Hogwarts Express with Ryou a few days later and helps him load his luggage into the racks above the seats. His owl hoots in the cage that sits beside the boy.

"What did you name him?" Keith asks.

Ryou smiles and whispers, "Khonsu. After the moon god."

Keith frowns, "Where did you learn that name?"

"I read it in some of Father's papers," the boy looks at him and says it so honestly that it shocks him for a second. He composes himself and continues on with what he's needed to do from the moment he learned the bird's name.

"You should change the name. It's not right to name your owl after a god."

"Why not?"

"Because the gods are dead and Khonsu is a name for the sick. You don't want him to get sick, do you?"

Ryou looks at his feet, "No…"

"Good. Now change it," he says sternly.

"I don't know what to change it to," the boy glances off to the side, stubbornly avoiding eye contact.

"Yes, you do. You know a name. Just think," Keith presses.

Ryou huffs and puts and he is reminded of his own sister back home who would always whine until she got her way. But then the boy looks up and says, "Bandit."

And Keith laughs because he'd told Ryou a few days previous about how Bandit had been his nickname when he'd started his job as an Unspeakable. He'd come to work with a pair of black eyes from a bar fight the night before and everyone thought he looked like a raccoon. His laughs subdue into chuckles as the train pulls away from the station and Ryou plasters himself against the window to wave goodbye to his family.

The boy grows up fast. Keith blinks and suddenly Ryou's a second year Slytherin, studying for his Potions finals. He still has trouble with his spellwork and goes through three wands a year, but that's to be expected of a mage going through a conversion. He remembers sitting in the hospital wing as Madam Pomphrey picks the wooden shrapnel of the first exploded wand out of Ryou's forearm. He doesn't cry, but Keith can see that he is holding the tears back. Afterwards, he grips Keith's sleeve and whispers, "Are they going to get mad?"

'They' referred to the Unspeakables in charge of the actual conversion lessons, not just Keith's job that's the day-to-day support. Ryou goes to them about twice a week after his classes at Hogwarts. Keith doesn't know what goes on during those sessions exactly, but he's not supposed to. That's something you got used to very quickly in his life of work: you don't know anymore than you're supposed to. Go looking for answers and you might not like what you find.

"No, they won't be mad," he tells Ryou. The boy relaxes and leans back into his pillow.

The next time he sees Ryou, the kid is white as a sheet and trembling so badly he can barely hold a quill. 'They' had been mad, as it turns out.

Ryou gets really quiet around his third year – not that he wasn't quiet before, but this actually starts to worry Keith a little. One night, he finds the boy playing chess against himself in an alcove behind a suit of armor in the astronomy tower.

"It's after curfew. How'd you get out?" He asks, knowing that he has portraits around the entrance to the Slytherin common room, reporting whenever the boy comes and goes. They didn't tell him anything tonight, or any other night for that matter. So how was he able to do it?

"I couldn't sleep," the boy answers and moves the black night to take the enemy castle.

"Why didn't you stay in the common room?" Keith frowns. Ryou shrugs, but doesn't say anything. That's all he needs.

"Ryou, did you walk through the walls?"

The boy doesn't react, but he makes another play o the board before spinning it around and staring at it again with his blue eyes.

"Kid, we've talked about this. I'm going to have to make a report, you know," Keith sighs and sits down on the floor next to him.

"I know."

"You know that they'll get mad again, right?"

"I know."

"Then why did you do it?"

"I couldn't sleep."

Keith groans in frustration. He likes Ryou, he really does, but he hates that it's nearly impossible to get a straight answer out of the kid when something is bothering him. Keith knows that the only way to get any semblance of what is going on is to search his nearly daily letters to his sister for clues. He's aware that Ryou's aware that he does this, as the boy has taken to writing in some sort of code that he's only begun to crack. Keith escorts the boy back to the common room and orders him to stay there or, so help him, he _will_ report this.

He checks Ryou's letter the next day and is surprised to find it written completely in English. Keith reads the two sentences written on the page nearly ten times before he fully understands what is going on. The letter may be addressed to Amane Andrews, but it's also for him.

"I think I like boys, too. Do you still love me?"

Keith almost snorts, but then he remembers that he's not in America any more. Back home, the wizarding community is pretty close to that of the muggles'. He's familiar with the general consensus of acceptance that's growing amongst his generation when it comes to gays. But this is Europe and the wizards here have Nazi-like ideas of blood purity and a downright medieval social hierarchy. Ryou has every reason to be scared about the fact that he's into other guys. It could destroy his entire future.

The next day, Keith sits Ryou down in his office and tells him that he honestly doesn't give a damn. The boy sits very still for several minutes before snorting in a way that was very unlike him. Ryou shakes his head and sighs.

"You don't get it," he chuckles humourlessly.

"No, I guess I don't," Keith leans forward. "But maybe I could if you explained it to me."

Ryou rests his forehead in his hands and just breathes of a moment. He sucks in air through his nose before speaking again, "You can't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you."

Keith agrees, but knows full well that this is going in the report regardless. Ryou sees this and stresses, "Really. You can't tell anyone. I haven't told anyone this – not even Amane."

This surprises him, because the idea that Ryou could actually keep a secret from his sister is headline-making news in his books.

Ryou swallows hard before he speaks, "I've been dreaming about _them_ since I was little."

Keith raises an eyebrow at the _them_ comment - as opposed to a singular _him_, but doesn't say anything because the kid's thirteen and doesn't need to understand his particular sense of humour just yet.

"I don't know what they look like...I always forget when I wake up. But..." Ryou pauses for a second, thinking his words over, "...sometimes, we laugh together. Other times, we talk about magic...the gods...the world. He's fire and she's lightning. I know that much."

"What do you mean by that?"

"That's just what they are. He's fire and the sun and the day. She's lightning and the sky and the horizon. And I'm - " he stops completely, jaw clamping shut.

"And you're...?" Keith prompts.

It takes a few minutes, but Ryou keeps going, "I'm air. I'm the moon and the night." He groans, "I can't even remember their names."

"They mention names?"

"Yes. But its like they're talking underwater. I can't hear them when they speak."

Keith nods, slowly digesting this information, "And what happened the night you couldn't sleep?"

Ryou goes absolutely red. He scoffs and sputters, but it's enough that Keith gets exactly what happened in that dream.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No!" Ryou snaps and Keith feels a bit guilty about how relieved he is about that fact.

"Well," Keith says, "there is the possibility that your dreams come from some latent Seer ability. You do quite well in Divination. Professor Trelawney speaks rather highly of you. These people you talk about - the fire boy and the lightning girl - they could be people you're going to meet."

Ryou snorts again and looks at his clasped hands. Keith frowns and continues, "As for the whole 'liking boys' thing, that's alright. If you like boys, then you do. There's nothing wrong with that, Ryou."

The boy fixes him with a glare that honestly sends a ripple of fear down Keith's spine. He knows that Ryou wouldn't hurt a fly - hell, he's seen the kid catch and release them back into the wild before. But there's something about that look at makes him tremble. Something that's almost ancient. And it terrifies him.

Ryou's lips curl back into a snarl and something akin to a hiss escape his throat. Keith's hand flies to his wand purely on instinct. He's heard of mages that can transform before, strong ones that took San Francisco almost a year ago as their last stronghold. These mages were supposedly unstoppable and versed in magic that no wizard had ever encountered before in their kind. A hundred years ago, the idea of a wizardborn mage was unheard of, but now it seemed like there was one born to every family of purebloods in each generation. If mages are changing again, then something big is happening. And if Ryou had the ability to transform, then he would have some serious trouble on his hands.

But the kid doesn't do anything other than snarl (though Keith swears that he can see fangs in his mouth) before saying, "You're such a hypocrite."

"What?" He jerks back in confusion.

"So it's fine if I want to fuck a bloke up the arse, but the moment I walk through a wall, you've got a problem? Where's the line, Keith? What's right and what's not?" Ryou spits.

"Hey, that's not what I meant," he tries to explain but the boy has nothing of it.

"I can't believe - gods, I never should have said anything! I thought you'd understand," he stands up so fast that the chair he was sitting on falls over. Keith has never seen Ryou so angry before. The room seems to darken as the shadows expand. The candles (the ones with ever-burning charms attached to them) flicker and, one by one, go out.

"Ryou," Keith calls out in a deep, dangerous voice. "Calm down. Right now."

His wand slips into his palm and he holds it out in front of him in warning. Ryou sees this and, for one second, his skin ripples and almost looks like its covered in grey scales.

But that moment passes and Keith's office lights up again as the candles flick back on. He lowers his wand with shaking hands and lets go of the breath he doesn't know he's holding. Ryou kicks the felled chair in frustration before walking right of the room, slamming the door behind him. Keith slumps back into his seat and rubs his forehead. His superiors are not going to like this.

Setbacks aren't good for mages undergoing conversion. If they rebel against the program or simply don't show signs of success, they are taken care of. The families are told that their children are being taken away to a special training facility and letters are falsified and sent home to ensure them of their children's continued survival. But it is all a lie. Failure is not an option.

Keith knows that he's messed up big time. Rule number one about mage conversion is that you don't get attached to the subject. And here he is, contemplating faking his report so that Ryou doesn't get marked as a possible risk. The kid's powerful, do doubt about it. He could have torn Keith to bits a few minutes ago. But he didn't and that means something. He doesn't know _what_, but it's not good or bad or anything really. It's just damn confusing.

It takes him three tries before he can write a report with the complete truth in it. It takes him another two hours before he can send it. Keith drowns himself in fire whiskey that night and passes out on the floor of the Hogshead. The bartender cleans him up and takes him back to the castle, slipping a hangover potion into his pocket as he goes.

After Ryou comes back from his conversion lessons with the other Unspeakables, he barely sleeps for a month. He twitches at loud noises and hardly eats anything at dinner. When Keith asks his superiors just what is going on during those classes, they tell him not to question what's above his clearance level. That night he finds Ryou curled up under the desk in his office, fast asleep for the first time in weeks. Keith doesn't question how he got out of the common room this time. Instead he drapes a blanket around the kid and tucks a pillow under his head.

Ryou doesn't exactly get better, but he doesn't get any worse, which is a good thing, he supposes. He's stopped blowing up wands and his spellwork is relatively decent. Trelawney may always be predicting the kid's death at every turn, but that hasn't stopped him from excelling in the subject of Divination. Even Snape gives Ryou the occasional compliment, though Keith suspects that it has something to do with the kid being in Slytherin than anything else. It's like it always is.

Ryou gets his first girlfriend in his fourth year. Igraine Selwyn is a third year Slytherin with pretty brown curls framing her face. James Andrews is more happy to hear that the girl's a pureblood than the fact that his son is actually smiling for the first time in almost a year. Keith doesn't really get the whole pureblood fascination that this country seems to have, but then again he is an American. When the New World offers up the lowest wizarding populations on the globe, its genuinely rare to see anyone with magic in their families that goes back more than three generations. Keith's own mother is a muggle. Same thing with his half-brother. But things were done differently in the West.

Keith can tell that the kid actually likes Igraine. He picks up her name in Ryou's coded letters to his sister. During their meetings, he mentions that he wants to introduce her to his parents and asks advice on what to do for dates. Keith would be impressed, if he wasn't so damn confused. Hadn't the kid admitted just half a year ago that he is into guys? Maybe he's faking it now for his parent's sake? Maybe he'd just going through a phase back then? But it doesn't matter. Ryou is the happiest he's ever seen him. Keith's almost proud.

And then fifth year happens. Fifth year for Ryou is like something right out of a nightmare. Somehow, people start finding out. Keith assumes that someone recognized the signs of a conversion - the exploding wands, the barely passable spellwork, the need for a 'personal teacher'. But the rumours begin and Keith is left to pick up the broken pieces of Ryou's shattered mind.

Igraine breaks up with him - and that's putting it lightly. He walks into his dorm to find one of his friends making out with her on his bed. Keith is actually amazed that Ryou kept a lid on his temper and that this Sam Rowle kid hasn't turned up dead. Then, one by one, Ryou's friends turn their backs on him and he's left to face the storm on his own.

He ends up in the hospital wing at Halloween with a curse that makes him speak backwards and cause warts to pop up in the middle of his back that burn like a thousand biting fire ants. Madam Pomfrey takes longer than normal to fix him up.

Dumbledore starts getting letters from concerned parents. Keith knows that the headmaster has and will never get behind the program, but the man continues to allow Ryou to remain at Hogwarts because he's aware of the alternative. But the boy's condition gets worse and worse, to the point where he starts regressing. Keith catches words in his letters to Amane that frighten him. Words like 'death' and 'end it all'. There are moments when he wonders if it would be more merciful to let the kid just do it than forcing him to stay here and suffer.

Ryou chugs a vile of the Draught of Living Death with his morning pumpkin juice the day before the Christmas holidays in front of the entire Great Hall. As he falls out of his seat, Keith rushes to his side and carries him out. Snape runs batlike behind him with what he hopes is the antidote. Ryou's pale and his chest doesn't move and Keith honestly thinks he's dead until Snape pours Wiggenweld Potion down his throat. Colour returns to the kid's face and he stutters into consciousness.

Keith keeps him in the Hospital Wing for the night so that he can make sure that Ryou doesn't try anything else. The idea of the boy (and that's what he is, just a boy, just a fifteen year old boy) wanting to kill himself over his own self hatred makes Keith want to whisk him away and take him to a place where this will all be alright. San Francisco. He could take the kid to San Francisco and he could be with his own kind.

Ryou cracks open an eyelid just then and glances at Keith from where he's lying on the cot in the Hospital Wing. The boy tries to smile at him and it's so wrong that he chokes up and cries the tears that Ryou refuses to. He's killing him. He's the one responsible. And, fuck, he's going to keep going because that's his damn job and he has to and this is so _sick_.

Then Easter happens. Ryou finally snaps. And Keith realizes that it really is true what they say: it ends, as it always did, at Hogwarts.

* * *

Amane has been raising her older brother since she was five years old and Keith Howard came to their house to tell him that he was wrong. She hates that man more than anything in the whole world because of what he has done to Ryou.

Her brother lives two lives. The first face is the one he shows to the world. It is the mask, the part that he's supposed to play in the script that is his life. He's the first born son, the heir to the Andrews line. Ryou's to be a scholar like their father. He's supposed to be polite, well mannered, and intelligent. He's supposed to marry a pureblood girl and be a father by the time he's twenty. And most of all, he's supposed to _want_ that to be his life.

Except Amane knows better. She knows that if Ryou is ever going to be happy, he can't live that life. It would kill him.

Ryou's not a wizard. She's known that since she was three and he ran through her bedroom wall to comfort her after a nightmare. Afterwards, she'd made him show her again and Ryou spent hours passing through walls and pieces of furniture and once even through her with a smile on his face. About a year later, he develops a new power - one that they manage to keep secret from both of their parents. Ryou can turn invisible. Needless to say, this makes sneaking extra dessert from the kitchen a heck of a lot easier.

Ryou's never going to be a scholar. It's not that he doesn't enjoy reading, because he does. It's just that the history textbooks that Father and Professor Binns make him read get him _angry_, to use his own words. He doesn't understand why exactly, but he says that they're wrong.

He's not as polite as he leads people to believe he is. Ryou's got a mean temper on the rare occasion that it bubbles to the surface and could probably comprise an entire paragraph out of curse words, if he really wanted to. He steals things, too. It's almost impulsive. Ryou can't go through a meal without palming a piece of cutlery to take with him. By the time he's in fourth year, he's robs Professor Snape's personal storerooms of all the ingredients needed to make Veritaserum and _gets away with it_.

Amane doesn't think that Ryou will ever get married. The idea of domestic life just doesn't seem to suit him. This is her brother that she's talking about: the boy that sneaks out at night to run with the centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, the one that once climbed up the Astronomy Tower on the outside just to prove that he could. She just can't imagine him settling down with someone and talking about doilies or the weather. That's not who he is.

Ryou's a mage. She doesn't think that there's anything wrong with that. Magic is magic, no matter how you happen to use it. So what if Ryou can't use a wand? He can do so much more without it. Besides, what's so good about wizards anyways? Forcing someone to be something that they're not and demonizing all those who were different isn't exactly something to be proud of.

So Amane encourages him to practice his powers. She tells him to be true to himself. She helps him to find who he is, to just _be_.

Ryou is able to be real with her. And when the going gets bad in his fifth year, he's able to open up raw to her in a way that he never could be with Keith Howard. Amane reads his letters and sees his descent into depression and fears for her brother's life. He comes home for Christmas a broken man and leaves in a worse state. From then until the Easter holidays, there are a series of letters from his professors about how he's starting to fail his classes - all of them, even Divination where he used to surpass the expectations of his teacher on a daily basis. Professor Trelawney is actually the most concerned of all of the Hogwarts staff and constantly sends warnings about how the night is coming from him. She's more than worried, but explains that fate is inevitable and that it is best to accept what is coming rather than deny it until it is upon him.

Ryou's letters tell her about how his fellow students have turned on him. His work is sabotaged regularly and he can't seem to walk down the corridors without taking some form of abuse. He sleeps in Keith's office because it's no longer safe for him to stay in his dorm. Once, Ryou writes to her asking why he couldn't have just done _it_ right the first time. Amane remembers his suicide attempt a few months ago and cries.

He's home for Easter now. Tomorrow he's going to have to go back to that horrible place. He's going to have to return to a world that despises him for something he can't control. It makes her sick to her stomach that a school that preaches inclusion for peoples of all magical backgrounds - pureblood, mixed, or muggle - would do such a thing to someone.

Amane is ten years old and all she can think about is her Hogwarts letter. It will be her way of always being there to support her brother. That, and the fact that she'll finally be able to punch Igraine Selwyn in her stupid face for breaking Ryou's heart.

* * *

Ryou sits on the edge of his bed and stares at his trunk with a drawn expression on his face. He hasn't slept properly in weeks. Amane doesn't think that he's eaten in a few days either. Ryou's always been a skinny boy, but over the course of the last year he's gotten unhealthily thin. He looks up at her as she comes in, blue eyes peering out from underneath his black hair.

He tries to smile at her, but can't seem to hold it on his face. Amane swallows the lump in her throat as she sees the mess that her once proud brother has been reduced to. She sits beside him, leaning into his shoulder and holding his hand in hers.

"Don't go back," she whispers.

"I have to," his voice cracks with disuse when he speaks.

"No, you don't. You could stay here," she begs.

"Do you think father would allow that for a second?" He chuckles, but it's dry and lifeless.

"He doesn't have to know," Amane says. "Ryou, we both know that you could hide from anyone who could ever want to look for you. Why don't you?" When he doesn't answer, she rounds on him, "Don't tell me that you actually believe that they're right?! You're not sick!"

"I know," he murmurs. "But I can't explain it. I have to go back. I don't want to, but I have to."

"It's not right," she whimpers into his shoulder. Ryou turns his head and rests his nose in her hair. His arms curl around hers and he holds her like he's scared that she'll disappear.

"Amane," he rasps her name. "I don't think that I'm going to be able to take another two years of this."

Her blood runs cold because she knows what he's implying is truth. This conversion therapy is going to kill him. Because of some stupid ideal her father had about having the 'correct' magic, Ryou is going to die.

"Amane, I need you to listen to me," he breathes. "If something happen, you need to disassociate yourself from me. Enroll under mother's maiden name or go to a different school. I don't care. Just don't let them know that I'm your brother."

"Ryou - "

"Please! If you don't, they'll turn on you. The Blacks were able to pull it off. You can, too!"

"The Blacks?" She frowns, confused.

"Promise me," Ryou looks her dead in the eye, blue to green. "Please."

She nods, slack jawed and not quite sure if she's telling the truth or just agreeing to put him at peace. Relief floods his face and he leans forwards to rest his forehead against hers.

"I can't let them hurt you," he closes his eyes and breathes. "You're the one good thing I have left. If they ever hurt you, I couldn't live with myself."

His lids open and he pins her with his eyes. Amane gets that feeling of 'ancient' and 'beyond time' that usually comes with this action of his. Except this time Ryou raises a hand to her cheek, brushing his knuckles against her skin. There's a heat in his eyes that's never been there before and Amane's heart seizes in a way that's far too close to panic for her to stay completely calm.

"You're all I've got left," he whispers again as his lips brush against her own. Amane shudders and tries to stop herself from shaking. Ryou's world is falling apart around him and if she rejects him now, then there 's no telling what it would do. She knows that Ryou wants her in a way that's far too adult for her to comprehend right now, but he needs this. She's sacrificed her childhood keeping him together. She can sacrifice this, too.

She seals her lips against his and Ryou's hands curl in her hair. He kisses her like he's a drowning man and she's air and it scares her so much because she knows for a fact that if her brother is in his right mind, he'd never do this. Amane reminds herself of the Gaunt family, who married brother and sister to keep the line pure, and that her father always wanted their family to be like those in the Sacred Twenty-Eight. She thinks of this as Ryou pushes her back into his bed and tries not to cry.

His mouth moves to her jaw as he hooks one of her legs over his hips. Amane squeezes her eyes shut as his hands trail low on her stomach. Her fingers clench in the back of his shirt and buries her face in his shoulder to muffle any sounds she might make. But something must have travelled to his ears because Ryou tenses on top of her and stops completely. Slowly, he raises himself up so that he can look at her face. Amane tries to smile but can't.

Ryou throws himself off of her with a speed she didn't know that he possessed. He backs into a corner, legs giving out and sliding to the floor. He hides his head in his knees and grips his hair, rocking back and forth and muttering the whole time. She gets up, limbs still shaking and walks over to him.

When she gets close enough, she hears what he's saying, "What - why did you - sister - gods, she's _ten_! Sister - ten years! What kind of _monster_ are you?!"

Amane kneels before him and reaches out to touch his shoulder. The moment they come into contact with each other, Ryou nearly jumps out of his skin. He stares at her with wild blue eyes, pupils like pin pricks, and she realizes that it's not that she doesn't care about what he just did. Because she does. It's that she can't afford to.

She has to forgive him, because if she doesn't Ryou will shatter into a billion pieces and she doesn't want that. It's in no way right and it shouldn't be necessary but it is and she hates Keith Howard for making it so. Amane crawls in between his knees and wraps her arms around his neck, lowering Ryou's head into the crook of her neck. He lets out a shuddering breath before whispering, "I'm sorry."

He says it over and over again, thin limbs enclosing around her body like a human cage. He's terrified that she'll slip through him and leave like everyone else has and it doesn't make this whole situation any more okay, but it'll have to do.

And Ryou, for the first time in five years, breaks down and cries.

* * *

Ryou is pale and skeletal as he walks onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Amane holds his hand with a loyal ferocity, refusing to let go even when he tries to shake her loose. She knows what he's thinking and doesn't (can't) care.

She pilfers his money from his pocket before he gets on the train so that she has an excuse to give her parents to go after him. Ryou knows what she's done - he is the one that taught her everything that she knows about stealing - so while she finds the shades drawn on his compartment door windows, the latch is unlocked.

"You shouldn't be here," he murmurs under his breath as the door slides shut behind her.

"I don't care," she tells him and tries to mean it. Amane sits down beside him and notices as he tries to edge away. She swallows hard and composes herself, "Write to me."

"Amane - "

"I don't care, Ryou. Really," she grabs him by the chin and forces him to look at her. "You've got to keep writing, okay? If only to tell me that you're alright."

He sighs and Ryou brings a hand to hers and pries her fingers off of his face.

"You care, Amane. Don't lie to me. I tried to..." his voice seems to constrict and a low hiss comes from deep inside his chest. He's angry, but not at Keith or the world. Instead, he's mad at himself.

No, she realizes suddenly. She feels his skin turn to scales beneath her fingertips and sees his pupils become snakelike slits. The sky outside darkens and the shadows lengthen around him. No, he's not mad. He's _livid_.

But she's not scared. She'd never be scared around Ryou in one of his mage moments, no matter what kind of power he is displaying. She tightens her grip on his hand and speaks in a calm, controlled voice, "Listen to me. Okay, you're right. I'm not alright with what happened. It shouldn't have happened at all. But if that's what you need to be okay, then I will make it alright."

"What?!" Ryou cries out in shock and Amane sees fangs and a forked tongue in his mouth, "That's what you think I want?"

"Isn't it?"

"Do you even know what you're talking about?" He recoils from her as if she's burning.

"Not really," she admits softly.

"You don't - you don't know! Merlin, this is fucked up," he hisses. "It's bad enough that they've gotten to me with this whole conversion bullshit, but you as well? You're not even supposed to be _involved_." He sucks in a breath, trying to get a reign on himself, "Amane, I don't want _that_ from you."

"You did before," she points out, though she doesn't know what _that_ means.

"I wasn't thinking straight," Ryou yells. "Father kept...he was talking about marriage prospects and how I should try to get back with Igraine because she's a Selwyn and we need connections if our family is ever going to be in the same leagues as the main families. And I kept thinking that she'd never want me, no one wants me, because of what I am! No one except you. You're the only person that's _real_ who wants me."

He takes a breath and his skin returns to normal as light returns to the platform outside, "I never should have done what I did. I'm sorry, but no amount of apologies is ever going to make it alright."

The whistle at the front of the train blows, signaling the last call for those boarding the Hogwarts Express to get inside. Ryou gives her a withering look, "You should go."

Amane stands and brushes the creases out of her dress. She sighs, feeling older than she actually is, and kisses Ryou lightly on the cheek.

"Write to me, okay?" She whispers. He closes his eyes and nods. She turns to walk through the door and by the time she looks back, Ryou is invisible to the eye. Amane closes the compartment door and walks away, not knowing that that would be the last time she'd ever see Ryou Andrews in the flesh.

* * *

Keith never thought that he would see the day where Ryou would get truly and completely angry. Not just pissed enough to darken rooms and maybe, sort of, transform. Not just pout in a corner and refuse to talk. This, here, is beyond all of that. Finally, everything collapsed.

Granted, he should have seen the signs. Ryou is beyond moody upon his return to Hogwarts after the Easter holidays. He goes to class, but does nothing but stare at his desk until their completion. No one can find him afterwards and it makes Keith realize that the one time that he caught the boy out of bed after curfew only happened because Ryou wanted to be found. He has no idea what that means in the grand scheme of things, but it's probably not good.

Except one morning, about a week later, he shows up for dinner in the Great Hall. He walks in halfway through the main course and everyone stops talking just to watch. Keith thinks that it's quite ironic. For the first time since the founding of this school, all four houses were acting in harmony and it was in hatred of Ryou Andrews.

"Go home, freak!" A voice rings out from one of the tables. Dumbledore's face looks like it's made of stone.

"Twenty points from Ravenclaw, Mr. Carmichael," he calls out, but just as the sapphires start to move in the hourglass behind Keith, someone throws a chicken leg at Ryou's head. It phases right through him. Keith's heart stops beating.

Oh _shit_.

An open display of mage magic, and with two already existing strikes on his record, is the equivalent to the death sentence for Ryou. There's nothing he can do to cover this one up. The kid's going to die. Keith actually considers doing what his mother usually does in the situation and pray because he's _that fucking desperate._ But praying is useless because the gods have been dead for over a thousand years and even if they weren't, they wouldn't answer a wizard.

Ryou sits down next to Igraine Selwyn at the Slytherin table and she and her girlfriends immediately gather their plates and move to a different spot on the bench. He doesn't seem to give a damn as he reaches for the food spread out before him. Keith thinks he actually sees a smirk on the kid's face before he foregoes the knife and fork and starts ripping into things with his teeth. James Andrews would be horrified. Keith thinks that's the point. Right now, Ryou literally has nothing left to lose.

Dinner ends and Keith has barely touched his plate. His stomach is churning; his hands are shaking, and his wishes for some firewhiskey to give him courage to go about dealing with this. Ryou stands and, without glancing up at Keith, walks out of the Hall. He notices a group of students getting up from various tables and following him.

As he makes his way into the hallways, he sees a large crowd of students grouped together on the third floor. Cackles and jeers make their way down to where he is and Keith knows immediately what's going on. He tries to get up there to stop it all, but the fucking staircase moves in a direction that is the opposite of helpful and he is left to watch in horror as Ryou is forced against the banister and threatened with being thrown over.

The stairs finally right themselves and Keith makes a mad dash towards the third floor, pushing past students without a care for their well being. In the middle of the crowd is a circle, within which contains four students. Sam Rowle holds Ryou up by the hair, laughing at the kid's grimace of pain with a mouth of uneven teeth. Igraine Selwyn holds her wand out in front of her and her pretty face is contorted into something horrid and ugly. What surprises Keith more than anything else is that they are joined by Felix Cornfoot, a sixth year Gryffindor, and to his knowledge the boy has never interacted with this pair of Slytherins in his life before today.

"Put him down," Keith growls at Rowle. "Wands away. Right now."

"We're only doing what's right," Cornfoot snaps. "He's a mage. Everyone knows what to do with mages."

"Walk away, boy," he speaks in his rumbling, dangerous voice. "Do it now and there won't be any trouble."

"We'd be doing the world a favour," Rowle spits, but he throws Ryou down into the floor and moves towards Igraine. Keith rushes forward and helps the boy to his feet.

"Damn it, kid. Why'd you do it? You know what this means! I can't help you," he hisses as Ryou wipes the blood out of his eyes.

"It's okay, Keith. Really. I know what I'm doing," the kid whispers under his breath. "This is supposed to happen -"

Igraine Selwyn's voice carries over to where they're standing, "Forget about it, Sam. Next year, his sister's going to be a first year and we can get her, too. Do the job properly."

Ryou goes rigid. Six types of shock, panic, and fear pass over his face before it hardens into something he's almost intimately familiar with. Keith is reminded of the fourteen year old girl from Oklahoma, the one that wore the Katy Perry t-shirt and jean skirt. She's had the same look on her face before the plants in the room came to life and ripped a man to shreds.

Ryou is going to kill them.

The kid walks through him with a grace that is almost ethereal, ancient beyond words. Keith turns sharply, pulling out his wand as a knife slides out of Ryou's sleeve. He shouts out in warning before the boy spins back to him and throws his stolen cutlery with deadly accuracy. The knife embeds itself in Keith's wand, splitting it right down the middle and leaving him completely defenseless. He hears the sound of screaming students, sees the torches going out, knows that Ryou's skin is now covered in gray scales and his eyes are slitted like a snake. This _mage_ stands before him, blinks, and then dismisses Keith as not-a-threat before turning towards the three that spoke against his sister. And then he vanishes.

A second later, Cornfoot's eyes go wide, his wand falling from his grip. He hunches over and coughs up blood. As he collapses on the floor, Ryou appears behind him with what looks like Cornfoot's stomach in his hand. Igraine screams and holds up her wand in defense. She shouts a curse and Ryou dodges left, getting in close. He spins on one foot, kicking her wand from her grasp before yanking her in close. Rowle cowers on the floor as the rest of the students that were watching run for the stairs. Keith looks on in shock as the situation becomes the stuff of his own worst nightmares.

Ryou holds Igraine like their dance partners, hip to hip with a softness that shouldn't have been there. He presses a kiss on her forehead and tucks a lock of the girl's brown hair behind an ear.

"I cared for you once," Ryou breathes. Igraine squirms as she comes to life, pushing against his chest.

"Get away from me!" She yells, "I'll kill you, parasite! You and your blood traitor sister!"

Ryou's snake eyes narrow and a line of film flicks over them. A forked tongue slips out from in between his lips as he hisses, "So be it then."

His jaw opens wide, exposing fangs that sink into Igraine's neck. At first, Keith thinks of a vampire, but as he notices the silent scream on the girl's lips and the blue veins that pop under her now translucent skin he understands that, of course, Ryou is a snake. Of course, it's poison.

He drops her the moment he lifts his mouth away. Blood drips down his chin and there is a sadness in Ryou's face that looks so out of place that it's almost fitting. This whole thing is unlike anything Keith has ever seen in the mage before that it makes him wonder if he's ever known Ryou at all.

The mage turns to Rowle, who's hunched against the bannister. He takes a step towards him and Keith wonders if the High Priests and Priestess of the days of old used to walk like that. He should be doing something, but he can't move his feet. He can't move at all and it has nothing to do with magic or mages and everything to do with fear for Ryou's life. He doesn't give two shits about Felix Cornfoot or Igraine Selwyn or Sam Rowle. All he knows is that someone has to stop Ryou Andrews and he doesn't think that it can be him.

Ryou kneels before Rowle, gently prying his wand from his fingers, and sets it aside. The mage's breath comes out in a low, almost comforting hiss and wraps the boy in his arms. Keith remembers that Rowle had once been Ryou's friend before the mage pushes them both through the bannister and into the air below.

He hears the snap of bones and whatever had been previously holding him in place lets go. Keith leans over the bannister - and _holy fucking crap_, Ryou could use his powers to take other people with him through solid objects - and sees Rowle's hopefully unconscious body sprawled out on one of the staircases below him. Ryou comes into view as the set of steps underneath moves. Keith sees the mage bolting towards the landing before disappearing through a wall.

But as it turns out, Ryou has no interest in hiding. A castle-wide search finds him sitting calmly on his dormitory bed, staring darkly at the candle on the other side of the room that refuses to be lit no matter what anyone tries to do. Keith's superiors lock Mage Cuffs around Ryou's wrists and he is led out of Hogwarts. But right before he passes through the main doors, he calls out for all that have turned out to watch him leave.

"If any harm ever comes to my sister, I will find the ones responsible."

It earns him a smack on the back of the head by one of the Unspeakables, but Keith can honestly say that Ryou doesn't give a damn.

And thus, it all ended of the mage Ryou Andrews at Hogwarts. Death for him would start here at this school, with its secret history of slaughter, and come to its completion on an Unplottable island just south of Hawaii.

* * *

**Happy 2014! Internet kisses go out to all of those who didn't get kissed at midnight! Which is a damn shame because look at all you cuties out there!**

**I'd like to thank InsanityByDefinition for her review. You are awesome!**

**A few of my personal headcanons ended up in here. The first of which is that the New World doesn't have a very large population of wizarding people. This is because when it was originally being settled, wizards were forbidden from becoming colonists. However, that didn't stop muggleborns from being born into the colonies. Eventually, a few pureblood families moved over so that they could function as a 'ruling class' - the one percent, if you will.**

**Second, in comparison to the rest of the world, wizarding Europe (and especially Britain) have a very traditional social hierarchy. Because the Statute of Secrecy was created in 1689, they still embody many of the values from that age. America is closer to the Victorian Age, but because of their closeness to muggles, a few ideals have slipped their way in.**

**The Sacred Twenty Eight are a group of Twenty Eight families that are the 'royalty' of British wizarding society, as they are considered to be truly pure (as their wizarding family history goes back almost a thousand years). The Blacks, Malfoys, and Lestranges are on this list, as are several other families including the Selwyns and Rowles. The Andrews family are considered pureblood, however they only have a few centuries of 'purity' to them and therefore cannot be part of the list. James Andrews, while not a Death Eater, is obsessed with power and sees having connections to the Sacred Twenty Eight as being a way to get a leg up.**

**And finally, the Gaunt family has gotten to the point of marrying brother to sister in an attempt to keep the line 'pure'. This is based off of the fact that the Blacks have never married into the Gaunt family - which is surprising considering that their words are 'Always Pure'. You'd think that a family that is so obsessed with purity would be gunning for a chance to have the descendants of Slytherin in their family. Also, when Morfin talked to Voldemort about his sister, Merope, running off with Tom Riddle Sr., he never seemed angry to me. I have always read it as jealousy.**

**Keith Howard is going to play a pivotal roll in this series. I honestly love his character because he's going to go through so much (I have so many messed up plans for him). He and Amane are going to be our eyes and ears into the goings on of the wizarding world. Amane will be attending Hogwarts in the same year as Harry Potter, though she will not have any major interaction with him for a while.**

**Until next time,**

**AlcatrazOutpatient**


	3. Last Breath

**The Three Kings: The Hunt**

**Disclaimer:** _Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters_ is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon As Systems, and TV TOkyo. _Harry Potter_ is owned by J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, adn Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

**Warning:** child abuse, anorexia, suicide, character death, and gore.

* * *

**Chapter 2: Last Breath**

Rex Raptor is thirteen years old and in chains for something he can't control. He never asked to be a mage. He never asked to be born to a witch mother. He can't help the fact that his skin is harder than diamonds. He doesn't deserve to die for this. He's not a fucking monster.

He manages to keep it hidden for most of his life, too. Rex makes it through almost two years at school before he is discovered. He's heard that others aren't as lucky. But what has luck got to do with anything when you all end up in the same place at the end of the day?

His mother isn't able to pay for a conversion, but he chalks it up to the fact that its only the elite that get that kind of special treatment. They want to preserve what little purebloods America has left and you can't have those types of families with mages cropping up every generation. It's so fucking stupid, but hey, they are the ones with the gold so _obviously_ their reputations comes before the lives of those on the other end of the stick.

Rex looks around the cell that he's just been thrown into. There are two other kids in there with him: a nerdy looking boy with a bowl cut that seems to be about his age and, _holy hell_, a little girl with blonde pigtails that can't be older than ten. It's sick, so fucking sick that he lurches over and throws up all over the stone floor.

"You alright over there?" Bowl Cut asks.

"Just peachy," he answers. The girl starts to cry.

"Where's my mama?" She sniffles and Rex can't help but feel awful.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he tries to look less intimidating in his muggle clothing, comprised of a baggy windbreaker and skull-and-crossbones hat, then he normally does. "What's your name?"

"R-Rebecca," she answers.

"Hi, Rebecca. I'm Rex. And this is..." he trails off, hoping that Bowl Cut will take a fucking hint.

"Weevil," the guy says through clenched teeth.

"Yeah. That's Weevil. And we're all going take care of each other, alright?" Rex grins.

"Really?" Rebecca wipes her nose with her sleeve.

"Really. Look, how long have you guys been here?" Rex asks.

Weevil answers, "A few days, I think. I've been here longer than she has. They transferred us all in her today."

"I just arrived," he says. "I heard one of the guards talking about someone else who's coming. Foreigner, I think. British."

"Grandpa's from London," Rebecca whispers.

"I don't think your grandpa's coming," Weevil frowns at her and the girl dissolves into tears again, calling for her mother.

"Nice going," Rex snaps at him.

"We're gonna die. I ain't got time to worry about her feelings," Weevil hisses. "Can you get these undone?"

He nods to the Cuffs and Rex tries to use his magic, tries to call upon the insane strength that comes with his impenetrable skin, but the Mage Cuffs suck it all out of his grasp. He gives up before they drain him entirely and shakes his head.

"Damn, I though...this is not good," Weevil curses.

"What do you mean?"

"These chains, they're specific to each one of our powers. Your Cuffs wouldn't work on me and vice versa," Weevil explains. "And if you've got a power they don't know about..."

"The Cuffs don't cover them. So we're hoping to develop something in the next ten minutes," Rex groans.

"Yeah. I almost escaped using my acid yesterday, but they caught me before I could leave the island. I got a good look at the place, though," he shrugs. "If we can get out again, I'm sure I could lead us to the docks."

Rex glances down at Rebecca as hope pops into his head, "Hey! Can you do special magic, too? Special magic that you've never shown anyone before?"

The girl doesn't answer, instead shaking her head and letting out a wail that echoes around the cell. Shit. Shit, shit, _fuck_, what the hell were they going to do?

A noise comes from outside. The door swings open and Rex finds himself staring at the business end of a witch's wand. Weevil shoves Rebecca behind the two of them and a series of clicks escapes from his mouth in anger. The witch snorts and flicks her wand, sending Weevil crashing into the wall. The little girl cries into Rex's pant leg. He wants to tear them all apart with his teeth.

A second witch appears and shoves a gangly boy into the cell with them. He's thin, almost anorexic, with pale skin and black hair. Rex can see the distinct bone lines in his face and feels compelled to get this guy a burger, or fuck, just something eat because he looks like a zombie.

The newcomer looks up at the sound of Rebecca's sniffles and his blue eyes widen. He seems to come alive, spinning around at the closing cell door and screaming, "You sick freaks! She's a little girl! You monsters! How is this right?!"

"Give it up. They can't hear you," Weevil mumbles as blood drips down his forehead. "The room's sound proofed."

"Damn it," the guy slams his chained fists against the door in frustration.

"If we're all here, they're probably going to start soon," Rex whispers under his breath as realization slowly dawns on him. The guy can't seem to hear him speak, can't seem to stop staring at Rebecca with horror filled eyes.

"She's too young. Far too young for the program. Why is she here?"

"I want my mama," Rebecca cries again. "Why did she let them take me? I just wanna go home!"

Oh god, he's gonna be sick again. That's just wrong. That's just so fucking wrong.

The door unlocks again and a wizard bursts through this time. He's blonde, sharply dressed, and clean-shaven. He points his wand and shouts, "_Petrificus Totalus_!"

Rex's arms become glued to his side as his body turns to stone. He falls over with a loud clanging noise. Weevil and Rebecca quickly follow suit.

"Keith? What are you doing?" The boy gapes openly as the wizard steps forward and points his wand at his Cuffs.

"_Alohamora_," he says and they spring open. The wizard - Keith, apparently - grabs the boy by the wrist and tugs, "Come on, Ryou."

"Not until you tell me what's going on!"

"Damn it, kid. We haven't got time for this!"

"You tell me right now or I'm not going anywhere," the boy hisses in a way that is anything but human.

Keith struggles with himself for a second before relenting, "I'm getting you out. They call mages into the chair alphabetically and you're first on the list. I'm taking you to San Francisco to live with your own kind. I'll spend the rest of my days running, they'll kill me in the end, but I will not watch you die."

"What about them?" Ryou jerks his head towards Rex and the other two.

"What _about_ them? We have to leave now!"

"They are _children_, Keith! The girl is younger than my sister! You're going to leave them here to die?!"

"Yes!" The wizard shouts and Ryou goes silent in shock, "Yes, I'm going to. I don't give a _flying fuck_ about them, Ryou! They are mages and they deserve it! But you don't, so come on!"

"_I'm_ a mage!" The guy shouts, "I've sent three people to St. Mungo's!"

"They deserved it, too!"

"I've done things that you don't know about!"

"Like what?"

"_I attacked my sister_," Ryou spits and Keith takes a step back. "I pinned her down and I hurt her and there isn't anything I can do to fix it. And just because you think you know me, you think I deserve to be saved?"

"Ryou, stop being such a fucking Gryffindor," the wizard looks around, desperately searching for something that would tell him that what this guy is saying is a lie.

"I'm not. I'm a Slytherin. I'm self-serving. I do what's best for me. And I've wanted to die for a very long time now," Ryou's voice shakes as he speaks. "I'm a Mage and I'm wizardborn. This is how my people die."

Then Rex watches as he reaches down and picks up the Mage Cuffs that had fallen to the ground, locking them once again around his wrists. Something very painful passes over Keith's face before he waves his wand once more. Rex's body unlocks and he sits up just in time to see the wizard walk away, slamming the door shut behind him.

"You could have left. Why the hell didn't you?" Weevil snaps, but Ryou runs to his side and covers the boy's Cuffs with his hands.

"_Alohamora_," he breathes and they open. Rex's mouth drops.

"...the fuck?" He swears and Ryou moves to Rebecca and does the same thing.

"Before I left, I defeated Keith in a fight. I take the powers of those I defeat and I keep them until I'm beaten myself or I take someone else down. _Alohamora_," the guy explains as he frees Rex. "They didn't catch me, I went willingly with them, so I was able to keep the wizard magic."

"That's incredible," Weevil stares at him, slack jawed.

"Thanks," Ryou smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "I've got a plan."

It's pretty simple, but sometimes it's the simple ones that are the most effective. Rebecca, as it turns out, can turn into a shadow; she's the one that's going to hide them as they make their escape. Rex is on defense if they get discovered and Weevil's their guide.

"No matter what, you get her out or you die trying," Ryou stresses.

"What about you?" Rex asks.

"I'm going to be the distraction," he says and Rex's blood runs cold. He pulls Ryou off to the side.

"You do that and you're gonna die," he whispers.

"I know."

"I don't care what it was that you did to your sister, man. I'm not leaving you behind."

Ryou gives him a withering look, "Please."

"No."

"Please," the look of desperation on his face is so many levels of wrong. "I planned for this to happen. I want this to happen, like this."

"No," Rex says again.

"Yes," Ryou answers in turn. "But I will not let that little girl die, not if I can help it. You get out, you get to San Francisco, and you find a group of mages to take you in. You live. Do that for me, okay? Live."

He can't help it. Rex hugs the guy. Ryou is so thin that he can count his ribs through the fabric of his shirt. He's only a few years older than Rex himself, but he's about to die so that they can live. And it's not bravery or recklessness, no; this is a strategic move so that everyone would get what they wanted. It's almost ambitious, if ambition was fucked five ways to Sunday and so goddamn wrong that it makes him want to scream.

But it is what they have and what they must do, and if Ryou happens to take down a few of those assholes while he's at it, Rex can't find it in himself to feel sorry for them.

* * *

Keith has seen a few Mage executions in his time; the first one had been a thirty-year-old man who'd had to be dragged into the chair. He raged and cursed and tried to bite all those who came near him. Keith remembers that man because that was the first time he'd ever seen a Mage before. It was the first time he'd ever though, "They really are monsters, aren't they?"

The second one had been the girl from Oklahoma and she cried up until her last breath. The third one had been an old woman from somewhere in the former U.S.S.R. She'd prayed beforehand and died calmly, almost peacefully.

The thing about mages is that some of them have the ability to reflect magic; so randomly firing a Killing Curse at them could result in some pretty dire situations. So they use the one thing that would bypass any kind of barrier or protective enchantments that could be set up: the Thief King's Millennium Ring,

The whole process, in and of it's itself, is pretty easy. Chain the mage to the chair in the execution room and slip the Ring over their necks. They just stop breathing, completely serene - gentle. Keith thinks it's more humane than _Avada Kadavra_. The victims of that curse seem to seize when it strikes them, as if they're in pain. Mages get it easy.

The Ring is kept in the dungeon of the Department's international headquarters along with the other two Mage Items in Wizard possession. The Millennium Eye and the Millennium Spellbook are kept in a separate room. Keith has seen them before. He's ever read from the Book on a few occasions. He's watched the Ring take lives before, but not like this. Never like this.

They won't be coming to collect the Ring for at least another fifteen minutes, so Keith slips inside and closes the door behind him. He considers grabbing it and throwing it into the ocean, but knows that he can't. Unlike the Eye, the Millennium Ring is temperamental. It won't let anyone touch it. The executioners have to wear protective gear and even then, each time they pick it up takes years off their lives. If Keith does anything now, as he is, he'd only make it worse for Ryou in the end.

Ryou. _Fuck_. Ryou. He can't do anything. He can't stop this. And even if he could, the kid would probably slit his own throat the moment they got off the island because he _planned this_ and he _wants to die_. It's all Keith's fault. He did this to Ryou. He's killed him.

Ryou had turned on his own sister. On Amane Andrews. The one person in his life that he'd sworn to defend at all costs. To what brink had Ryou been driven for him to act out like that? What had gone on in those 'classes' that Keith had never really looked into to transform the ten-year-old boy he'd first seen clutching his sister's hand into the person who would rather die than continue on another day?

It isn't his job to ask, but he should have. And now it's too late.

He looks at the Millennium Ring. It's made of gold: a thin sheet shaped into a triangle with the corners connected by a thick loop. Hanging from the circle are five tines and at the top is a small hole where a cord has been slung through. In the middle of triangle is the Eye of Horus and Keith is convinced that it's watching him.

He sits down and stares at it - this thing that is going to end Ryou's life. It shines in the dimly lit room and Keith hates it all. The Ring, the mages, his job. _Himself_. But not Ryou. He can't find it in himself to hate Ryou. He never will.

And then he hears it: a rasping sound that comes from behind him. He knows what this is, but he's never seen it before. Others have - just a select few - but not him. So Keith turns and sees _him_.

He can't tell how old the spirit of the Millennium Ring is. His skin looks like its been stretched over his skeleton, like a hundred year old corpse that's been dug up and exposed to air. The tattered remains of clothing hang from his hips, barely holding itself together. The spirit looks at him with bloodshot eyes from under hair so matted with dirt and grime that its impossible to tell what colour it is naturally. It's long in some places and shorter in others, as if it's been ripped off at odd angles.

The spirit looks like it got in a fight with a werewolf and lost. Red blood is dripping from a gasp on his forehead, and that's the least horrifying of his injuries. There's a large chunk of flesh missing from his calf. Keith can see the barely healed claw marks that crisscross his chest and the cut that has slashed his throat. The spirit brings a hand to his neck so that he can breathe properly.

Keith sits motionless on the bench in front of the Millennium Ring and watches as the spirit limps towards him at an agonizingly slow pace. He sits and realizes that, dear Merlin, this is all that's left of the mages' supposedly great and powerful Thief King. That incredible person has been reduced to this: a skeleton of a man that had to hold himself together with his hands. It would be sad if the Thief King weren't an enemy.

"Are you here to kill me?" Keith asks calmly, but inside he is anything but. His stomach coils in on itself because he can feel the raw power that rolls off the spirit. It's terrifying.

The spirit either doesn't or can't answer and he suspects it's the latter because of the rasping breath and the cut throat. He pauses momentarily, gazing at Keith with his eyes, red and bloody with veins in stark contrast with their white backgrounds. And then the spirit almost seems to sigh before moving to sit down on the bench beside him.

Keith doesn't know whether to laugh or scream, so he does neither and continues to stare at his feet. After a few minutes, he glances up and sees that spirit's eyes are still, unnervingly, fixed on him.

"If you're not going to kill me, what do you want?" He scoffs. The spirit blinks, blood continuing to drip from his wounds. Keith chuckles humourlessly at his predicament, "What the hell am I doing? You can't even understand me."

The spirit's lips curl back and what teeth he has left are crooked and black. Keith realizes that he's smiling. Or smirking. Probably smirking. And that's weird because the spirit of the Millennium Ring has never been said to interact with people before.

The spirit reaches forward with his hand (his left one that's missing two and a half fingers) and taps the wood between them twice. Keith's eyes jerk from them to the spirit's face.

"Wait? Can you really...?"

The taps come again and the spirit's smirk of a smile widens until it looks uncomfortably stretched. Keith knows he should probably contact a superior, but the question just comes out.

"_Merlin_, how old are you?"

The spirit's mouth closes as his brow furrows, as if trying to remember. Then he starts tapping once more, and Keith counts. One, two, three, four. Past ten. Past fifteen. There's twenty and twenty-one and then they stop. Twenty-one. He was twenty-one years old when he did.

Keith knows the legend - well, the basics, but that's pretty much all that anyone knows these days. The Lady Pharaoh, King Commander, and Thief King are chosen by the gods to rule Egypt and end up dying in a battle against a great evil that threatened to destroy the world. He's always assumed that the three of them were his age, in their thirties, when it happened. And to think that the Thief King had been that young, that he's died at twenty-one years of age.

Just like Ryou, his life had been over all too soon. And then, he gets an idea.

"You...know what happens to the people that put on your Ring, right?" Keith leans forward. The spirit looks away as his remaining two and a half fingers curl into a fist. He waits and hears two knocks.

"It's going to happen again. Today. And there's a boy. His name is Ryou Andrews. Can you save him?"

One knock. No.

"Why not?" Keith growls.

One knock. Damn it.

"Save him!"

One knock. He lurches forwards, grabbing the spirit by the shoulder and he's thrown into a memory that's not his. He watches as the spirit stares down into a pit of fire and darkness and something looks back. It roars and rages and struggles against the chains that bind it. And the spirit looks on, holding his neck closed with one hand and limps away.

Keith is thrown back and the spirit stands up, backing away as fast as he can with a barely functioning leg. He picks himself up and watches in horror as the tines of the Millennium Ring start to twitch and move around. The spirit looks at Keith with wide, surprised eyes before tapping twice on the wall behind him. And then he disappears completely.

* * *

Pete Coppermine is relatively new to the whole Unspeakable thing. He was an auror in Detroit for a few years before being hand picked for the Department by Mr. Pegasus himself. He's proud to be able to serve the wizarding world in its endeavors, no matter what it means he has to give up. Sacrificing contact with anyone he's ever met before is all in the name of the greater good.

This is going to be the first time he's ever seen a mage. For the last few months, he's been doing paperwork, but this is it. If he can pull this off and see a mage at it's worst, then they'll let him out into the field. Maybe he'll get paired with one of the legends, like The Bandit, Keith Howard.

The Bandit has over twenty successful hunts under his belt and has been apart of three executions, which is more than a lot of other Unspeakables can boast about. Pete knows that one of the mages that is in today is the Bandit's conversion project, but hey, some aren't meant to be saved. It's not like it matters much anyways. If there's one less mage in the world, he sure as hell isn't going to complain.

Pete walks with two others towards the detention cellblock shortly after twenty-one hundred hours. There are four of them scheduled for termination tonight: Ryou Andrews (the Bandit's conversion, fifteen years old, wizardborn from Scotland), Rebecca Hawkins (eight years old, throw away from New Jersey), Rex Raptor (thirteen years old, capture from North Carolina), and Weevil Underwood (fourteen years old, muggleborn mage from New Brunswick).

One of the two Unspeakables, Willa Mette, opens the door to the cell and calls for Andrews to step forwards. The mage is thinner than a blade of grass, with black hair and blue eyes. He moves away from where the other three are standing, out of his own free will, and walks towards them. Andrews gives Raptor a shaky smile before the door closes behind him.

"Alright. Move it, freak," Mette shoves Andrews down the hallways and trades a smirk with Pete. He can't believe it's this simple. The mage is so pitiful and weak that it's almost easy to despise him. He's nothing. He can do nothing.

The mage stops moving, causing Reiko Kitamori, a transfer from the Japanese Department, to dump into him. She shrieks and backpedals quickly before Andrews whispers, "_Alohamora_."

The Cuffs fall to the ground and then everything goes straight to hell. Pete sends his Patronus to call for back up as Andrews dodges Mette's spells, inching forwards until he's within striking distance. Kitamori screams as the mage grabs Willa Mette by the face and, in a voice so cold, hisses, "_Reducto_."

Mette's skull is blown open and his brains splatter against the wall. Pete fires off the Cruciatus curse and it clips Andrews in the shoulder. He screams and drops to his knees and Pete laughs because the parasite is getting what he deserves and -

The mage looks up, eyes like ice and grabs Mette's wand. He leaps forwards, holding it above his head in a fist. Foregoing the wand's magical properties, Andrews stabs Pete in the hollow of his collarbone. As he yelps in pain, the mage snaps the wand in half, lodging the wood in his body, before he is blasted away. Kitamori had blown him into the wall, knocking the mage out. Andrews' head lolls to the side as he sits, slumped in his unconsciousness.

Kitamori runs to Pete and presses her hand to his wound. Back up finally arrives and they place the Cuffs back around Andrews' wrists. She looks between him and the mage and whispers, "They really are monsters, aren't they?"

* * *

The moment that they have Ryou chained to the chair, Keith walks in to the execution room. He knows that he has no business being in there, but he goes anyways because he needs a fucking explanation for all the shit that's gone down in the last half hour.

He dismisses Coppermine and Kitamori with a wave of his hand and kneels down in front of Ryou. The boy's fingers dig into the wooden arms of the chair, finding a home in the deep gouges left there by its previous occupants.

"Damn it, kid. You've really done it this time," Keith swears.

Ryou chuckles, dry and lifeless, "I assume that they got away?"

"Yeah. News like that travels fast." It's not everyday a mage escapes from this island, let alone three.

"They were just children, Keith. I had to."

"I know," he sighs. "I know you did. You crazy son of a bitch."

He looks up into Ryou's eyes and sees that ancient gaze of his staring back. Keith has never met someone like this kid before and he doubts that he ever will again. Something one of a kind is going to die in a few minutes and the world will be a little less bright because of it.

"The three that I hurt at Hogwarts - Igraine, Sam, and the other one? How are they doing?" Ryou asks suddenly.

"Igraine's doing alright, last I heard. They found an antidote for whatever you pumped into her, but she isn't waking up. The healers are hopeful, though. Sam, well, it was a spinal injury so magic can only do so much. He'll walk again, but he'll limp for the rest of his life."

Keith takes a breath and continues, "Felix Cornfoot was the third one. And you took out his stomach. Regrowing organs isn't like regrowing bone. He's going to be touch-and-go for a while."

Ryou nods slowly and then lets out a shaky laugh, "Three lives destroyed. Three lives saved. It's fitting."

Keith realizes that the kid has said nothing about Willa Mette, the man who had his brains blown out fifteen minutes ago. He wonders if Ryou even cares? He wonders if Ryou's death is supposed to even the odds?

"I dreamed of _them_ last night." Keith looks up just in time to see a single tear roll down Ryou's face. The boy is smiling and it makes him want to die. "We were…sad. Because we were going to die. Does that…mean I'm going to meet _them_ now, Keith?"

He reaches up and covers Ryou's thin hands with his own much larger ones. And he lies because the gods are dead and there is nothing beyond the Veil of Death but emptiness and finality. But Ryou doesn't need to know that. Not now, "Yes, it does."

"I think I love _them_. Do you think that _they_ love me back?"

"Of course, _they_ do," Keith whispers, lies through his teeth because he's not even sure who _they _are or if _they_ were ever anything more than figments of Ryou's broken mind. "I think _they'll_ be very happy to finally meet you."

The executioner walks in, wrapped head to toe in cloth embroidered with glowing, ancient markings. In his (her's? He can't tell) hands is the Millennium Ring and Keith remembers the spirit and hopes that maybe - just maybe - there's a chance to save Ryou. The executioner motions for him to get out of the way and he does because it's his job and Keith is a fucking puppet and he hates himself.

"Tell Amane to take care of Bandit for me," Ryou shouts his last words. "Promise me, Keith."

"I will," he says and he means it. He'll do this one last thing because the owl is going to be the one thing that he will not fail Ryou at. He refuses to fuck this one up. He can't.

The rope of the Ring falls around the boy's shoulders and breath leaves his lungs. Ryou finally seems to relax as his body slumps forwards in the chair. Keith can't stop his hands from shaking. The executioner, silent as ever, reaches for the ancient mage artifact, wanting to remove it from the corpse of the child it just killed.

And then, suddenly, it all goes wrong.

A pale hand grips the executioner's wrist with such strength that Keith can hear it snap on the other side of the room. The woman behind the mask howls in pain as the spirit of the Millennium Ring emerges from the shadows. He doesn't bother holding his slit throat together anymore, so blood gushes from the gaping wound and flows down his skin-and-bones chest as he stretches his hands open in front of him. Not a single word is uttered, but the air in the room just seems to _move_ and then the executioner is blasted straight through the brick wall behind her.

Keith fumbles for his wand, but he is infinitely too slow. The spirit appears in front of him, slamming his fist into Keith's throat. He chokes and it disorients him long enough for the spirit to kick his legs out from under him and send him crashing to the ground. He tastes vomit in his mouth as the spirit climbs on top of him, smirks with his black teeth, and then smashes his head against the floor.

When he finally comes to, Tilla Mook, a fellow Unspeakable, helps Keith to his feet. She tells him the impossible: the spirit of the Millennium Ring is trying to help Ryou Andrews to escape.

"But he's dead. Ryou - he died," Keith tries to wrap his head around it all. He's covered in the spirit's blood. It hasn't dried yet, so it mustn't have been too long ago that he'd been knocked out.

"Yes, he did. But somehow, he started breathing again."

He jumps to his feet, ignoring Mook and the dizziness that hits him, because _Ryou is alive _and he has to help him. Somehow. Anyway he can. Because he got too close and he should regret it, but he can't and never will.

Keith finds the two of them at the eastern cliffside, surrounded by what seems to be the entire wizarding population of the island. He pushes his way to the center of the circle and calls for everyone not to fire on them.

"Are you mad, Bandit?" Someone calls, "They killed Willa. They killed Maico. There are three dangerous mages on the loose. Like hell, I'm not going to drop 'em!"

"One of those so-called 'dangerous mages' is an eight year old girl who couldn't stop crying for her mother!" Keith shouts, just as the spirit turns towards him all. With the wave of his hand, the calm night breeze becomes a whirlwind of chaos that knocks everyone back nearly seven hundred yards. Keith gets the feeling that the spirit wasn't even trying that hard.

The spirit is holding Ryou up as a coughing fit racks thin body. His nose is bleeding, his ears are bleeding, and as Keith runs forwards as fast as he can, he can see that the kid's eyes are bloodshot red. Keith sees Ryou's veins underneath his near-translucent skin as his knees give out.

The spirit seems to ignore his own injuries as he gently sets Ryou down on the earth in a way that's almost tender. The moon shines behind the two of them and Keith sees the other man from before, the one that threatened to kill them, point his wand at the pair. Keith shouts for him to stop with the spirit disappears and instantly reappears in front of him. The remains of the Thief King grabs his face and _whispers_ something unintelligible. The man screams and falls to the floor, unmoving.

And then the spirit turn to Keith, the blood from his cut throat impossibly dripping down his chest, and he thinks that this is it - it is how he's going to die. His wand hand drops to his side and he closes his eyes, wondering if Ryou felt like this moments before he drank the Draught of Living Death, before he used mage magic in the Great Hall, before the executioner slipped the Millennium Ring around his neck.

"No!" Ryou's shout echoes across the field. Keith's eyes snap open and he sees the spirit in front of him, deathly hands inches away from his face. The spirit almost looks annoyed, sneering through black teeth and staring with red-veined eyes. He moves back, grasping at his throat.

A hiss escapes his mouth and Keith can swear that he hears the spirit rasp, "_Lucky_." He falls to his knees as the pale ghost of a man disappears and reappears in front of Ryou again.

No one else dares move as Ryou guides the spirit's hand to his chest. The boy glances over at Keith, blue eyes bright in comparison to the rest of his dying body and smiles.

"You couldn't have fixed me. There was nothing to fix," and then he turns to the echo of the Thief King.

"Do it."

The Millennium Ring, still hanging around Ryou's neck, jumps to life. The tines dance as it shines unnaturally, before they impale themselves in the boy's chest. He screams as the spirit dissolves into Ryou's form. He hunches over, clawing at his face and face. Something, and Keith nearly faints when he realizes that it's skin, slouches off his arm.

Ryou is coming apart. Literally. Keith tries to deny it, but when the boy's fingers fall off his hands and onto the grass, he can't. He rolls over onto his back and tries to breathe, but he's bleeding so badly that it clogs his lungs and throat and he's left to cough and sputter in his attempts to find air. His legs shake and then it happens.

The hairs on the back of Keith's neck stand on edge as a wave of pure magic rolls off of Ryou's broken form. The shockwave blows past him, colours churning so fast that it looks white. The air around the boy ripples and steam hisses off his body. Ryou throws his head back, arms open wide, and scream as another wave rips its way out of him.

And then it stops. For a moment, all there is is an eerie calm where Keith can only hear the crashing of waves at the bottom of the cliff. But then Ryou, impossibly, starts to move again and he rushes forwards to help him to his feet.

Half the kid's face is missing, he can only count of six on his fingers, and there are streaks of white in his hair, but Ryou Andrews steadies himself in Keith's arms and stands there like he hasn't just died and come back to life twice. He looks down and sees the Millennium Ring still impaled in the kid's chest. He swallows are and speaks.

"Kid, come on. We have to get out of here. Right now," but Ryou doesn't listen. That's when Keith notices that he's not breathing. In fact, he's not doing much of anything. It takes him a full second to realize that _standing up again_ was the last thing that Ryou had done before dying a third and final time.

The Millennium Ring flashes, it's tines removing themselves from the boy's body, and Ryou turns to sand. His corpse dissolves and becomes dust in the wind, his clothes falling to the ground. Keith's knees give out as he, too, collapses. And only when the sun finally rises hours later does he move again.

* * *

**Hello again!**

**I'd like to thank those that reviewed for the last chapter: InsanityByDefinition and Greatest Illusionist.**

**So, yeah. Killed off Ryou. Sort of, anyways. You'll see what I mean later. That being said, I really like how Yami Bakura turned out here. Due to the changes I've made to the sealing of Zorc, the Thief King was in charge of sealing up his body. And in the thousands of years in between then and now, the two of them have had some 'disagreements' - hence, why the spirit is so beat up.**

**Also, going to say that the Ryou who existed before the Ring was put on him and the Ryou who left that chair aren't exactly the same people. Even though barely anytime passed for us, it was almost a lifetime for him. Time passes differently inside the Ring.**

**As for my headcanons in this, I believe that Pharaoh Atem and Thief King Bakura (of actual YGO canon) had their souls split upon the sealing of Zorc. Everything 'light' about them went into Yugi and Ryou and everything 'dark' went into Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura. Together they make their ancient versions of each other. Only Yami Bakura also had the entirety of Zorc with him in the Ring and after a few thousand years of driving each other insane, the two of them could no longer tell the difference between themselves. However, in The Three Kings, Zorc's sealing with split between three different people, which is why Yami Bakura still has his sense of self.**

**Until next time,**

**AlcatrazOutpatient**


	4. Where Land Meets Water

**The Three Kings: The Hunt**

**Disclaimer (1):** _Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters_ is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. _Harry Potter_ is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

**Disclaimer (2):**_ Chef Boyardee_ is owned by ConAgra Foods. _Red Bull_ is owned by Red Bull GmbH. _Free Fallin'_ belongs to Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Mike Campbell, and MCA Records. The _New York Yankees_ are owned by Hal and Hank Steinbrenner. The _Hilton Luxor Resort & Spa_ belongs to Hilton Hotels & Resorts. The author, AlcatrazOutpatient, claims no ownership to any of the things referenced in this chapter.

**Warning:** Nudity, mentions of self-harm, PTSD-induced flashbacks, self-hatred, depression, homophobic slang, and sexist slang.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Where Land Meets Water**

It's only when the shoreline disappears and they're out over open water that Rex realizes they're being followed. This scares the crap out of him for a whole lot of reasons because it's dark, they've got no offensive capabilities, and they managed to steal the two shittiest brooms that the island had to offer.

It's Weevil's first time on a broom, too, since he's a muggleborn mage and all. That means that he can barely control the damn thing and he veers back and forth every few minutes. Combined with the fact that Rebecca is clinging to Rex like a second skin and wailing for her family, they're completely and totally fucked. He wishes Ryou were here. But he can't because Ryou's dying for their freedom back on that island and Rex refuses to let his sacrifice be in vain.

There are at least five wizards behind them, gaining quickly on their lightning fast brooms. One of them fires a spell at Rex, so he turns his skin to diamond and it simply bounces off his back. He wraps an arm around Rebecca, pressing her face into his chest. He's not letting a little girl see this; it was bad enough when Weevil had to melt a witch's arm off while they escaped. He falls behind Weevil to give him some sort of protection. But the wizards are coming in fast and Rex can hear their laughter. It's all just a game to them. Hunting mages is a fucking _sport_. Killing kids for fun, those fucking monsters.

Then something really weird happens. A bright light flashes behind him and Rex turns just in time to see a column of pure _magic_ fade into the night sky. The shockwave hits a second or two later and he struggles to maintain control of his broom. Rebecca stops crying and looks over his shoulder to watch.

"Ryou?" She whispers. And, for some reason, it fits. That magic felt like the skinny Scottish boy from the cell, but at the same time, it doesn't. Ryou is only part of that wave. And oddly enough, that feels right as well.

The second shockwave knocks Weevil clean off his broom. Rex darts down, catching him singlehandedly, and swings him behind him. But this costs them precious seconds that they can't afford to waste. And now the enemy has surrounded them, laughing at the prospect of killing three kids in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's fucked up. Beyond fucked up. And Rex wants to see them all dead.

But Rebecca isn't crying. She's staring back towards the island, blinking in the darkness like she can see something that everyone else can't. Then, for the first time since he set eyes on her, Rex sees the girl smile.

"He's not dead," she breathes, eyes bright with wonder. "He's coming back for us."

Then, just as her mouth closes, the night sky goes from clear to cloudy. The stars disappear as the waves below them become choppy. The wind whips around, churning and cutting, so fast that Rex can't keep his eyes open. He hears the screams of their pursuers as they get caught up in the storm of the century and flung around like ragdolls. It stops just as quickly as it starts and Rex opens his eyes to see the remains of brooms and bodies in the water below.

"Look," Weevil says suddenly, pointing to the air in front of them. At first, he can't see anything, but then he squints. There's a fine dust in the air, almost like ash. It floats and swirls, catching in the moonlight as the clouds dissipate, before coming together and circling them twice. Rebecca giggles and passes her fingers through it as it flies by. Then the dust shoots off into the distance, as if telling them to follow.

"Do you think that's...?" Weevil never finishes his question, perhaps because he's not willing to hope that the impossible happened and Ryou somehow manages to escape. But that begs the question: why the fuck is he sand?

Rex nudges the broom forwards, flying in the direction he hopes land will be in. But, strangely enough, he feels calm. Weevil occasionally swears at the fact that they're flying over an ocean on 'cleaning supplies,' Rebecca is humming a song under her breath, and they're following a friend who's disintegrated, but that's fine. Rex wonders how the hell this is his life.

* * *

Weevil doesn't know how long they've been flying. He doesn't really care, to be honest. What he does remember of the trip is a whole lot of fear and trying not to vomit (he gets seasick and carsick and apparently _broomsick_, as well). When the shoreline finally comes into view, he's more than a little bit grateful.

The sand takes them into a bay and Weevil recognizes the lights along the Golden Gate Bridge. They're in San Francisco. Somehow, they made it there alive. He dares to feel some hope after all of this. But then he remembers that he's never going to see his family again, that he's never going to go home. And that hurts more than anything those people from the island could ever do.

Rex touches down on a beach near the famous landmark of a bridge. Weevil immediately rolls off and lays flat on the earth.

"Oh god, I swear...never again. Never flying ever, _ever_ again," he groans.

Rex laughs behind him, "We nearly get killed and that's what's freaking you out? Flying?"

"Fuck off, man," he throws back.

"Dude! Language!" The guy nods towards Rebecca. Weevil finally admits defeat and promises to keep it PG from here on out - an expression that, strangely, goes over Rex's head like he doesn't know what a movie is.

But before he gets the chance to clarify, he hears Rebecca scream. The two of them are at her side immediately, ready to take on any threat to her, when something comes out of the water.

It's a hand, he realizes. One that's quickly followed up by an arm, shoulders, and head. But they're completely featureless, like a manikin in a shore window. As the creature moves through the water towards them, Weevil can see pure white hair shooting out of it's head as it gains eyes and a nose and a mouth. When it makes it's way completely onto shore, it stops looking like its made of clay and more like skin and muscle and bone.

Weevil blinks and realizes that he's staring at a very wet, very naked man. Rex slaps his hand over Rebecca's eyes in response.

The man cracks a grin.

"We made it," he says. "Knew the Ring wouldn't lead us wrong."

Then his eyes roll up into the back of his head and he falls face first into the sand.

"What. The. Fuck." Rex stares. Weevil doesn't even care about the hypocrisy of him swearing. Instead, he cautiously approaches the man and flips him onto his back to get a better look at him. He's dark, with a wicked scar that passes through his right eye. He's short but wiry and his bone white hair sticks out at odd angles like he's stood in the middle of a windstorm.

There are other scars as well, he notices. Faint, half-healed nicks cover his fingers and feet, while his nose looks like it's been broken at least twice. There are a series of razor lines on the insides of his wrists that make Weevil's throat clench. He's seen those marks on his sister before. He knows what they mean.

"Is he dead?" Rex calls from where he stands. Weevil presses his fingers into the man's neck and feels a steady pulse thumping beneath his skin.

"Yeah, he's fine," he responds. "Who the hell is he, though?"

"No idea," Rex says. "What should we do with him?"

It's a valid question. Some clay manikin walks out of the San Francisco Bay, turns human, and then collapses into a dead faint - all of Weevil's instincts are telling him to leave the man behind. He doesn't look normal, from the white hair that's apparently natural (he didn't mean to look, really) to the mark that covers half his face. But the scars on his wrist remind him of the sister he has back home, the one he has left teetering on the knife's edge, and it calls to him in a way he can't ignore.

"We should find him some clothes," he decides.

Rex nods and takes Rebecca with him to go loot one of the shops along the street. They return with new shirts and pants on, with a pair for him and the man. They're incredibly touristy, with the words Torpedo Warf emblazoned across the fabric. Rebecca also seems to be clutching a stuffed seal toy and when he asks about it, Rex grumbles, "His name is Flipper."

Between the two of them, Rex and Weevil manage to get the man dressed in a hoodie that's far too big for him and a pair of cargos with more pockets than should be legal. Then they haul him up onto their shoulders. The man's bare feet drag against the ground as they carry him towards the street. Nothing is open, the roads are empty except for a few sleeping homeless people, and the lights are off. The four of them are all that move in the night.

Fifteen minutes into their silent trek, Rebecca complains that her feet are sore. So, they set the man down on a bench before flopping on either side of him. The girl crawls into Rex's lap and looks like she's about to fall asleep. They have to keep her awake, though. There's no way that the two of them could possibly carry the man and Rebecca at the same time.

"Where are we going?" Rex asks.

"No idea," Weevil answers.

"That's not good, is it?"

"Not at all."

And that's when things start to get worse. A cop car drives by and stops when it sees them. Weevil can only imagine what the four of them look like: two teenagers, one little girl, and a passed out man in stolen clothes sitting on a bench in the middle of the night. It doesn't help that they're so sleep deprived that they look like meth addicts. Yeah, they were so screwed.

"You kids alright over there?" One of the officers asks as he approaches, shining a light into Weevil's face. He shields his eyes, blinks rapidly until they adjust.

"Yeah, we're fine," Rex growls. Clearly, the cops don't appreciate his tone.

"Can I see some ID?" The other one frowns and steps closer.

This is not good. Really not good. Not only do they not have ID on them, but even if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. Weevil's a foreigner, Rex and Rebecca lived with the wizards before all of this, and he's pretty sure that the man didn't even exist half and hour ago. Any papers that they could possibly have would land them in jail at best, in the loony bin at worst.

The officers must be able to smell their uneasiness because they glance at each other and then ask if, perhaps, the four of them what to take a ride to the station. Needless to say, this sets Weevil's nerves to near-PTSD levels of edginess because this is exactly how the wizards caught him. They'd posed as police officers and taken him right out from under his parent's roof. The idea that these two might not actually be real cops passes through his mind and his acid fills his mouth out of reflex.

Rebecca clings to Rex with an urgency that shows just how scared she is as one of the officers slowly reaches for his gun - except, no, it's not a gun, it's a _motherfucking wand_ and they have to go now and -

The man wakes up.

His eyes snap open and he lurches into action. He moves so fast that Weevil honestly doesn't know how he knocks the two cops out, but he blinks and the man stands over them, the air around him moving unnaturally. And he thinks it's impossible because Weevil could swear that he looks familiar, but he's never set a man this young before that has white hair and scars that bisect his eye.

"We need to get out of here," the man says, pulling at the collar of his hoodie and looking at his chest.

"Who the hell are you?" Rex asks suddenly, eyes wide in shock or surprise. Weevil can't tell which.

The man opens his mouth to answer, but he pauses and thinks about it, as if he doesn't know. He sends Rex a very confused look before reaching under his hoodie, "Bakura."

"What?"

"Bakura. That's...that's my name. I think. _Oh_," the man's knees buckle and he stumbles to keep himself upright. Weevil reaches out to hold steady him and sees that his eyes are purple. As if he could get any weirder.

"Alright there?" Weevil frowns.

"Not...not really. I think I'm going to throw up," and then he does just that. All over the cops faces. He'd laugh if he knew what the fuck was going on.

When the man - Bakura, apparently - stops puking, he reaches back under his hoodie and pulls out a really gaudy necklace that Weevil knows for a fact wasn't there when he popped out of the Bay. It's a massive golden ring with five cones hanging off of it. Bakura mutters a few words in a language that completely escapes him and the thing jumps to life. A few seconds later, all of the cones are pointing in one direction: down the street.

"We need to go that way," Bakura says.

"Why the hell should we trust you?" Rex scowls, "You just walked out of the ocean. We've never met before. How do we know you'd not just a wizard trick?"

Bakura looks at him with his purple eyes, before sighing, "I don't understand it myself. I don't know and I don't really remember. What I do know is that my name is Bakura, that I'm twenty-one years old, and that I had to get you all to San Francisco.

"I also know that, a few hours ago, I wasn't who I just said I was. Rex, we met in a cell and I told you to live. I've also never seen you before in my life. So you can see why I'm confused. I honestly _don't know_."

He takes a breath and continues, "This is the Millennium Ring." He points to the gold pointy thing around his neck. " I asked it to take us somewhere safe and it hasn't let me down yet. So, we need to go that way. Now."

"Ryou?" Weevil asks, breathless. Was it possible? Could he have actually lived?

"Yes," Bakura answers, almost sadly. "And, no. I'm him, but he's not all I am. Now, come on."

Rex gathers Rebecca up in his arms and turns to follow the man that was once Ryou. Weevil looks back at the cops before they disappear into the night. There were no wands, just guns. He's been seeing things. That shouldn't comfort him, but it does.

* * *

To say that Bakura is confused is an incredible understatement. He knows what he's doing. He's leading three children to safely, whatever and wherever that is. But how he's doing it is a mystery to him. He's never used the Ring before today, yet he knows how to work it like it's been in his hands his entire life. Except, it hasn't been in his hands. Rather, he's been inside it.

He remembers it all. The endless hallways, the darkness, the loneliness. And the pit. Bakura remembers the pit most of all. There was a monster inside of it, one that roared and burned for an eternity. Except, they aren't really his memories. They're the spirit of the Millennium Ring's. And yet he is the spirit. Just like he is Ryou, but isn't at the same time.

He really doesn't get it. As the four of them walk in the direction the Ring is pointing them in, he tries to make sense of it all but almost tips over again in the process. Bakura's head spins and his stomach threatens to heave. Rex puts a hand on his shoulder and asks if he wants to take a break. He thinks that he can't remember the last time he ate - or if that one time even counts for anything because he's pretty sure this body is somewhere between brand new and thousands of years old.

"Got anything to eat?" Bakura asks meekly.

They don't, so they break into something Weevil calls a convenience store. Bakura is baffled by the concept of bottled water and canned pasta (though this Chef Boyardee person might be brilliant for coming up with the idea). Weevil offers to warm it up for him in something called a microwave, but he's suddenly so hungry that he downs the contents of the can cold.

Before they leave, he excuses himself to use the washroom and ends up staring at himself in the mirror. He touches the scar that cuts through his right eyes and is hit by a series of memories of a dark alley, the smell of burnt flesh, and the sound of someone - a woman - shouting his name. Bakura, she'd called. That lightning girl that was his horizon.

Bakura shakes his head, clearing his thoughts. He takes one more look at himself, thinking that Amane wouldn't be able to recognize him now, and then leaves.

They set out again a few minutes later. Rex is carrying a practically passed out Rebecca on his back. Weevil hands Bakura a can with the words 'Red Bull' on it and tells him that it'll give him wings.

"Really" He looks at the can and wonders when Muggles learned to make potions like that.

Weevil snorts, "No. Come on, haven't you seen the commercials?"

Bakura doesn't answer because, no, he hasn't. He takes a swing of the drink. It tastes like cranberries and he doesn't get how something named after a cow and tastes like fruit is supposed to turn him into a bird.

The Ring leads them to an inn almost an hour and a half away from the Warf they washed up on. By that time, Rex and Weevil look like they're about to fall over and Bakura is the one carrying Rebecca on his back. There's a light on in the lobby and for that he's grateful. Someone is there and, hopefully, they'll be able to tell him what's going on with his head.

Bakura wakes up Rebecca and sets her on the ground as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes. He hides the Millennium Ring under his jumper and pushes the door open for the kids to walk in.

The lobby is empty, though there is a steady beat of...Bakura think's its music, but it's unlike anything he's heard before. But the sound is coming from the door behind the front desk. Someone is back there, singing along to the words.

"Hello?" Bakura calls as Rex curls up in one of the chairs on the other side of the room and falls asleep.

"_~All the bad boys were standing in the~_ one minute! I'll be there in a minute!" A voice calls back. "Best part's right here _~And I'm freeeeee! Freeeee fallin'!~_"

There's a laugh and a blonde mop of hair appears through the doorway. It belongs to a boy in his late teens who's almost a foot taller than Bakura. He carries a mug of coffee that had the word 'Yankees' painted across the front.

"Sorry 'bout that. Don't get a lot'a people at...four in the..." the boy stops talking, gaping at Bakura like he's never seen another human being before. Then, very quickly, he sets the mug down and walks around the desk. He grabs Bakura by the shoulders and looks him dead in the eye.

"It's _you_..." he breathes. "It's really...it's really you! I knew it! _I just knew!_"

Bakura blinks and finds himself getting crushed into a hug so strong he can feel his bones creaking. He thinks the boy is on the verge of tears when he whispers, "I know it's been a few millennia, but _don't ever fucking pull a stunt that again_, you crazy son a bitch!"

He pulls back and holds Bakura at arms length. The boy still stares at him like he can't believe his eyes. But then the grin slips from his face and a look of horror replaces it, "Oh shit, tell me you know who I am?"

Bakura frowns in concentration and -

_They're surrounded by figures dressed in black. Their leader's face is blurred to his mind, but he's so familiar and the memory of him is warm like a lover's touch. Bakura smirks and raises a hand in greeting._

_The man beside him gives him a flat look, "Bakura, you better have a damn good explanation as to why a Medjay captain calls you friend."_

_"It's a long story, Jono," he answers -_

Bakura gasps as he rights himself in reality. He stares at the boy - no, man in front of him. The hair is a different colour and he's far too young, but it's him. It's _him_.

"Jono?" Bakura grabs his forearm, a smile working it's way onto his face.

The man's eyes light up, "It's Joey here. Joey Wheeler. I _knew_ you'd come back this time! I just knew it! Rich-boy owes me money!"

They both laugh, hugging and holding each other like long lost brothers. For the life of him, Bakura can't figure out why he's so happy, but he doesn't give a fuck. He can't remember the last time he felt like this.

"You two are giving a cavities," Weevil mutters behind them. "When you're done catching up with your boyfriend, Bakura, I would like to sleep somewhere that isn't a cell tonight."

Joey's jaw drops, "Bakura?"

"Yes," he answers.

"_Bakura_?"

"What?"

"Your name. He knows _your name_. _I remember your name!_ But that's impossible. You gave it up," Joey looks panicked. "The three of you _gave up your names _and right to an afterlife when you sealed the Destroyer." He turns to Weevil, "How the hell do you know his name?!"

"He told it to us. He said that it was the only thing he knew. That, and the fact that he's twenty-one," the kid shrugs.

Joey gapes at Bakura again, "You know your name?!"

And Bakura tries to forget it, forget the lifelong battle that Ryou and the spirit of the Millennium Ring had against the beast in the pit. It had taken place in the few seconds between Ryou's first death and revival and in the end, as the beast was consumed by the shadows, it had named them both.

"Bakura," it cried. "Thief King Bakura, child of the moon and the night and the air. The Master of Souls. The blood born survivor of Kul Elna."

"Yes," he answers. "I know my name."

Joey lets out a shaking sigh, "Fucking hell."

"Who am I?" He asks, begging for some kind of answer. Joey gripped his shoulder.

"It's a long story, Bakura."

* * *

Keith usually takes his coffee with milk. It's a habit he picked up young from his father, who took it the exact same way. It's not that he particularly likes it that way. If anything, he wishes he could do without the damn drink at all because it tastes like crap, in his opinion. But he needs the caffeine, so he sucks it up and drinks it.

However, there are some days when he takes it black. Pure, straight, liquid shit burning it's way down his throat. Keith only does this when he hits rock bottom and usually finishes the day by downing a bottle and a half of firewhiskey and waking up with a splitting hangover.

But as Keith stares down at the dark, murky depths of his coffee mug, he knows that there's not enough booze in the world to make this any better.

Ryou Andrews is dead. He'd died screaming at the hands of a mage weapon. There was no sign of the Millennium Ring amongst the pile of clothes that had been left behind when he...turned to dust. Merlin, he could barely believe it himself and he could still _feel_ the grit under his fingernails from where the bits of the kid that hadn't sailed off into the wind still lay. Keith doesn't feel anything. Not sadness or guilt or hatred. He doesn't feel sick. He's just empty.

He hasn't slept in at least twenty-four hours. Keith tried eating a few hours ago, but only managed a few bites of a sandwich. He just sits at the table in the staff room, drinks his shit-tasting coffee, and wants to get drunk.

He doesn't do much more than blink when Tilla Mook puts a hand on his shoulder. She gives him a small smile and he tries to return it, but can't. He remembers Ryou and how he never looked happy and wonders if this is what he felt like. Keith understands now why he had tried to end it all. He'd hate to feel like this all the time.

"They want you in the conference room," Mook says.

"Whatever they want, it can wait," he answers.

"No, this really can't. Bandit, come on. It was just a mage."

"Don't!" Keith snaps, "Don't you ever fucking say that again! He's not just a mage. He's so much more than that. You don't know...you don't...understand..."

His throat closes off as he feels his eyes starting to water. He doesn't dare let them fall. Not here. And not in from of Mook.

"The mage is dead, Bandit. And they need you in the conference room. Now," her face is cold and emotionless, her voice clipped. When she walks away, her heels click against the floor and her skirts swish around her ankles.

Keith stares at his coffee one last time before he downs the last of it. It burns all the way down and settles in his stomach like a pool of acid. Then he stands up and makes his way to the boardroom.

The island is a single massive compound, almost as large as Hogwarts itself. Except, unlike the school with its moving staircases and the magic embedded in its walls, the buildings here are simply stone and mortar. Mages could feel magic and, in some cases, could reverse or change it. All the magic that the island has is the spells that make it Unplottable and shut down muggle technology.

The island has no name or code name. It's just the island. He never asks why. He does that a lot, it seems - not asking. Keith should begin questioning things. Like why the island has no name. Or why mages have to die.

The island serves as a base for the main headquarters for the Department of Mysteries. There were sections in almost every wizarding government, using their money to fund experiments with magic to discover its secrets. It was part of a deal that was made between the Department and the International Confederation of Wizards when the first wizardborn mage was discovered. Ariana Dumbledore changed the world and the world doesn't even know. Things had been discovered in the last hundred or so years since the Department's creation. And all of those secrets had been used in the war against mages.

The order to kill Ariana had been issued here. The first and second mage conversion had taken place here and Gilderoy Lockhart and Andromeda Black had become wand users. Keith himself had been trained here. The island is the center of this war and now it would be remembered as Ryou's grave.

Keith knocks on the door to the conference room and announces his presence. A voice comes from the other side, "Enter."

He walks through the door and comes face-to-face with the main man of the Department of Mysteries conversion program.

"Mr. Howard," Maximillion Pegasus smiles over a glass of wine. "Please, have a seat."

He waves a hand to the free seat beside him. There's no one else in the room.

Pegasus looks to be about ten years older than Keith. His salt and pepper hair is tied back at the base of his neck and his face looks like it's been carved into marble. The man is wearing a dark suit with a blood red tie. He gives off the feeling of power and entitlement. Keith rarely gets intimidated, but he is by this man. He doesn't know what that means.

"I thought that there was going to be others," Keith lowers himself into the chair.

"Bah, they bored me, so I sent them away. Such busy bodies, always bickering and squabbling for one reason or another. They've never been out there in the field, so they don't understand," Pegasus takes a sip of wine. "Would you like a drink?"

"I-I'm sorry?"

"Would you like a drink?" He indicates to the dark bottle on the table, "It's from my own personal stores. An Elvish red from 1997. Quite good, if I say so myself."

"Sure. Why not?" Keith grumbles. Wine's not really his thing, but he's been planning on getting drunk tonight anyways. Might as well start now.

"Your record is impeccable, Mr. Howard. You are one of our best assets," Pegasus says as he pores Keith a glass. "How many hunts have you been on again? Twenty-two?"

"Twenty-four, sir."

"Ah, yes. Twenty-four. You know, most give up and retire after ten or twelve. And you've done nearly double that. Might I ask why?"

Keith takes a gulp of wine and thinks over his answer, "Honestly? Got no where else to go."

"You have far more than the average amount of O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. Prior to beginning your service to the Department, you worked for the American Ministry of Magic where you stopped an assassination on the Minister herself. Surely there would be someone that would take you in - and gladly, too," Pegasus raises an eyebrow.

Keith doesn't answer. But that's all Pegasus needs to understand.

"Ah, I see. You stay because you like it."

Merlin, he's sick. He's so fucking sick. He can see it now, _"Hi, I'm Keith Howard. My friends call me Bandit. And I kill kids for a living."_

"Hmmm... A bit troubling, but nothing to scoff at. However, you last assignment...now that was more than a bit _troubling_," Pegasus tilts his head slightly as he looks over his glass.

So this is what he's been called in for: Ryou. Of course, the leader of the Department and the inventor of the mage conversion process would want to know what the hell happened last night.

"A mage being able to survive the Millennium Ring. Incredible. However, the boy did succumb to it in the end, I suppose. And in such a spectacular way, as well. Doesn't it just send shivers down your spine to think that our enemies could have possessed such a power, say, had young Ryou Andrews ended up running away to San Francisco?" Pegasus' smile seems more threatening than comforting. Keith swallows hard. Did the man know that he'd tried to get Ryou to run away and live? No. It's impossible. Keith's occlumency is top notch. He'd yet to meet someone who could penetrate his shields.

"Yes, it would have been quite..._troubling_. But that didn't happen," he looks at the red liquid in front of him.

"Here's to that then," the man raises his glass in a toast that Keith rushes to respond to, however reluctantly. "Do you have any idea what happened?"

"No, sir."

"Are you sure? You practically lived with the boy for five years. Surely, there must have been something."

Keith shakes his head, "No, sir. There was no indication that that would happen. No one expected this, least of all me."

"Odd then, that it would happen. However, out of such loss for us," and Keith remembers Willa Mette and Maico and the three children in St. Mungo's, "there has been unexpected fruit."

Keith frowns, "I don't follow."

"The Millennium Ring, Mr. Howard. It's gone," Pegasus talks to him as if he's a child.

"Gone?"

"Yes. Gone. Destroyed. After one thousand years of trying, finally it has happened. And by a mage, of all people. I'm sure no one saw that coming," the man smirks.

"Oh. Right," of course. It's not about the life that was lost today. It's about the Ring. The fucking Millennium Ring and the fucking Thief King. It's about the war. No one cares about Ryou.

"Right," Pegasus nods sage-like. "Now, have you given any thought about your next assignment?"

Keith downs the rest of his glass, "No...not, really. A few days ago, I thought..."

"You thought that Ryou Andrews would be your ticket to an early retirement."

He nods, jaw clenching. It seems like a ridiculous dream right now. How dare he have thought that he could use a young boy to ensure a spot on a beach at the end of a seven-year period. He's such a monster.

"You've been reassigned, Mr. Howard. For the foreseeable future, you're going to be reporting directly to me. I want you to compile a team that will be ready for deployment at a moment's notice and be prepared to enter incredibly hostile environments," Pegasus grins. "You said you liked killing mages. I'm going to give you the opportunity to do that again."

"Forgive me, sir, but it almost sounds as if you're...promoting me."

"I am," he says. "You brought in the thing that destroyed the Millennium Ring. That alone is enough to guarantee your position as the head of this team, not to mention a pay raise substantial enough for you to buy a small country. And we need you, Keith Howard. We need you to take back San Francisco."

Needless to say, this shocks the shit out of him.

"You're kidding me! Sir, that's suicide! The mages in that city are beyond anything we've ever seen before. Who knows what else they're hiding in there? For all we know, they could have a Millennium Item!"

"We have the Spellbook."

"And in the thousand years we've had the thing, we've managed to translate, what? Ten pages?" Keith runs a hand through his hair in frustration, "Sir, it's been three years. Why in the world is this happening _now_?"

The man locks his fingers together and rests his chin in his hands, "That's classified, Mr. Howard."

"If I'm going to be leading this team, I want to be completely in the know. Declassify it, or I walk."

It's an empty threat and they both know it. If this assignment is truly as big as it seems, than Keith honestly doubts that Pegasus would have any qualms against having some of his experimenters taking his brains out and reprogramming him to take whatever command he's given. It had happened before. He's seen the soulless corpses of those who had refused work before. Men like Pegasus worked them until they dropped.

But that's not the point. Pegasus knows that Keith knows this. So he's either going to be impressed that he said it at all or...well, if the man isn't when it would really matter. Keith isn't going to feel much as a walking corpse.

Then, suddenly, Pegasus smiles again, "Croquet."

A house elf cracks into existence beside its master. It's ugly and wrinkled, with wisps of hair on its head and upper lip. There's a dirty rag hanging around its waist.

"Master?" The elf croaks and Keith realizes it's male.

"Give Mr. Howard the Mutuo file."

"Of course, Master," the elf snaps its fingers and then hands him the series of papers that appear. Keith takes them wordlessly before flicking through them.

Pegasus sighs, "Do you know why we never did anything after the mages took that city?" He doesn't wait for Keith to answer, "To be honest, no one really gives a damn about San Francisco. It's a city of fags and liberals and whores. The only reason people even know about it is because of some bridge and an island prison. So when they took it, there was no reason to get it back. We decided to keep it quiet, but take no action because we never wanted the city in the first place."

"But then you found out about...this. What ever this is," Keith mutters as he continues to read.

"Yes. Thankfully, the Confederation hasn't heard of it yet, but they haven't liked the fact that we kept San Francisco covered up. So they're pressuring the American Ministry to take action. I don't think I need to tell you how well us Americans would deal with the idea of unknowingly harbouring terrorists for three years. Thank Merlin that it isn't public knowledge yet. Could you imagine the reaction?"

Keith can. He doesn't like it. Except, he can _understand_ how people would be angry at being kept in the dark.

"And then we found this," Pegasus points at the photo paper clipped to the third page in the file. It's of a middle-aged man standing in a hotel lobby. The description on the back tells him that it's the Hilton Luxor Resort & Spa.

"Who is he?" Keith asks.

"Solomon Mutuo. Muggle - or, at least, we think he is. This was about twenty-five years ago, back when he worked on and off as an archaeologist - you know, a muggle historian that likes to dig in the dirt. Except, he had a nasty tendency for cracking mage tombs wide open. Needless to say, we kept tabs on him."

Pegasus points to the picture, "Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Mutuo took an interest in the tomb of the Lady Pharaoh - though, he didn't know it was her's or who she even was at the time. He planned to enter it and see what was inside. We set up two of our own to act as tour guides, under orders to kill him if worst came to worst. Our last communication with them told us that they had entered the tomb. We never heard anything from them and Solomon Mutuo dropped off the face of the earth. Naturally, we assumed they were all dead, just like the rest of those who have set foot in her tomb. That is...until three months ago."

Keith turns the page and reads the headline of a muggle newspaper written just over ten years ago: **SFSU GIRL GENIUS - THE LIFE OF A PROTEGE**.

The girl in the picture appears to be in her early teens with her long black hair (black like Ryou's and, damn it, that's a punch to the gut) spun into a series of dreadlocks. There's a thin scarf wrapped around her neck and a leather bag slung over her shoulders. Keith thinks that she's pretty in a soft way that makes you want to treat her like a china doll.

"Yuugi Mutuo," he mumbles as he reads the caption. "Daughter?"

"Granddaughter. They mention him in her family history about halfway through the article. Apparently, he's her 'inspiration'," Pegasus says mockingly. "That, and Solomon Mutuo alive and well, living in San Francisco. He owns a comic book store, whatever that is."

"An IQ of 217... Got her first Ph. D. at seven years of age... Been working at the University of San Francisco since she was nine. Holy crap!" Keith is genuinely impressed. She's a freaking genius.

"Yes, Ms. Mutuo is quite awe-inspiring, for a bastard girl who has no idea who her father is. But she is not important. With this new information, the question is how did Solomon Mutuo survive the tomb of the Lady Pharaoh and did he take anything from it's depths?"

"Let me guess. He did."

"We sent in scouts and _they came back_, Mr. Howard. The traps were deactivated and the tomb emptied of its contents. Whatever Millenium Item was in there is missing."

Keith fingers clench on the table, "But now that the Ring is gone, doesn't that mean the prophecy is useless. The Three Kings can't come back?"

"I don't know, Mr. Howard. But that doesn't change the fact that the mages in San Francisco have access to a Millennium Item with incredible, untapped, and unknown powers," Pegasus looks him dead in the eye. "We need to act now. They chose that city for a reason and we need to take it back before those creatures get anymore of a foothold there. We should have taken care of this three years ago. Are you ready to serve?"

"No," Keith closes the file and looks the man dead in the eye.

"No?" Pegasus' smile takes on a false tint and a shiver runs down his spine.

"Well, not yet. I still have to tell the Andrews family what happened to their son. They deserve to know about how he's 'been sent to the camp', after all."

Pegasus relaxes, chuckling into his wine, "Of course, of course. You have twenty-four hours to brief them on the situation, Mr. Howard. And get a few hours sleep. You look like you could use it. I expect you to gather your team within the week. Good day."

Keith knows a dismissal when he hears it. He manages to make it out of the room and down the hallway before his knees give out and he breaks down crying. He's a fucking monster. Ryou's death means nothing in the end because he hasn't changed. He's still the same murder he was five years ago. He does it because it's his job and he has nowhere else to go and he fucking likes this.

"Where's the line, Keith? Where's the fucking line?" He says to himself, "Just because you think that you knew him made him different? What about the others? If you'd known the other twenty-four, would you have tried to save them, too?"

He thinks of the girl from Oklahoma who wore the Katy Perry t-shirt and the jean skirt. She must have had a family that never found out what happened to their daughter, friends who searched for weeks after her death for a sign. That girl had been so much more than just a mage and he'd condemned her for that. He'd watched her die with tears on her face and a plea on her lips. And then he'd gone out for drinks with his team afterwards. He'd picked up a hooker, fucked her behind the bar, and brought her home with him for round two. Keith hadn't cared that he'd been part of the murder of a _fourteen year old girl_.

What the fuck is wrong with him?

* * *

**Hello all!**

**I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: InsanityByDefinition and Rita Mu.**

**Ryou Andrews and the spirit of the Millennium Ring have combined to bring forth their true form: Thief King Bakura! Rex, Weevil, and Rebecca have reached land and met up with Joey Wheeler, who is a total badass. Seriously, I needed someone awesome to be Bakura's second-in-command back in the day and he kind of fits the bill. And yes, Rick-boy is referring to Kaiba, who we will meet next chapter.**

**We also get our first look at Yuugi. She's a total genius. I believe that while Yami (in canon) received the cunning and resourcefulness of Atem, Yuugi received his raw intelligence. Yami, in the beginning, doesn't know how to play Duel Monsters - and how could he? He'd been trapped in the Puzzle for thousands of years. He learned through Yuugi. Everything he knows he learned from that boy. Which is why Yuugu is a genius here. That article was written several years before the series began, so she'll be about 24 when she eventually shows up. And much like Ryou, she's going to be a bit different.**

**Keith is starting to question everything he's ever known and Pegasus is _not_ helping. The man is so damn manipulative in that scene that it's actually terrifying. That being said, _I love writing him_ because he's such a scumbag. And the line where he's talking about Yuugi and dismisses her as being unimportant is so utterly powerful because Yuugi is literally the most important woman he's ever going to meet.**

**Until next time,**

**AlcatrazOutpatient **


	5. Past Meets Present

**The Three Kings: The Ring**

**Disclaimer (2):** _Yu-gi-oh! Duel Monsters_ is owned by Kazuki Takahashi, Studio Gallop, Nihon Ad Systems, and TV Tokyo. _Harry Potter_ is owned by J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Arthur A. Levine Books, and Warner Bros. Please support the official releases.

**Disclaimer (2): **_T.N.T._ belongs to Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Bon Scott (AC/DC), and Albert Productions. _The Mist_ belongs to Rick Riordan and his Percy Jackson series. _Red Bull_ is owned by Red Bull GmbH. The author, AlcatrazOutpatient, claims no ownership to any of the things referenced in this chapter.

**Warning:** Nudity, child abuse, self-hatred, depression, and hoarding.

* * *

Chapter 4: Past Meets Present

"_~'Cause I'm T.N.T! I'm dy-na-mite! T.N.T! And I'll win the fight!~"_

Joey Wheeler has hijacked his phone. Again. And this time, the moron has customized his personal ring tone.

Seto Kaiba is going to murder him.

He groans into his pillow, cursing the idiot to the pits of hell. He fumbles around blindly for the phone on his bedside table, knocking a thick book on various macroeconomic theories onto the floor. Finally, he finds the damn thing. He cracks open an eyelid and sees that it's 7:27 in the morning. Three minutes before his alarm is supposed to go off.

Joey has also added a picture of himself doing that ridiculous duckface pose. The police are never going to find his body.

"Do you. Have any idea. What time it is?" Seto growls when he finally answers the call.

"Good morning to you too, sunshine," Joey says in a sarcastic rebuttal. "I guess I caught you before your first cuppa joe, huh?"

"You know, some of us have nine-to-fives. And a regular sleep schedule," he snaps.

"Well, some of us have girlfriends. How about that?"

Seto doesn't say anything at first, just grinds his teeth together, "Wheeler, make your point or I'm hanging up."

"Geez, no need to get your underwear in a bunch," then, all of a sudden, Joey gets serious. This sends up all kinds of red flags, "Look, some people showed up at my work around four last night. I need you to get your ass down here asap."

"Mages?" Seto asks, sitting up straight and wide awake.

"Oh yeah. Definitely."

"Then you know how to handle setting them up with a place. Why do you need me?"

"Dude, _seriously_. This is something you need to see for yourself to even believe," when Seto doesn't answer, Joey lets out a frustrated whine. "_Asshole!_ Look, I've got a box of those crap health bars that only you and Tea eat. And coffee. Now, hurry up and get over here!"

"Fine. I'll see you in an hour."

"Fuck you, rich-boy."

"Goodbye, Wheeler."

"Yeah, whatever. Later," with that, the line goes dead.

And then this alarm goes off. Swearing, Seto waves his hand and it goes dark, the electricity powering it having been cut. He makes a mental note not to keep doing that because resetting the clock is damn annoying.

He crawls out of bed, pulling off his pyjamas as he goes and steps into the shower. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes as he rinses the suds from his hair. Once he's dressed in a shirt and a pair of slacks, he texts his co-worker, Z, and tells him something's come up and that he'll be late for work.

"Morning bro," Mokuba says when he enters the kitchen. Seto's little brother sits at the kitchen table hunched over an open textbook, his black hair falling into his eyes. When he looks, he can see that his brother is studying for his psychology exam, which is in two weeks if he remembers correctly.

"Good morning," he responds. "Joey called."

"Oh god. Did you see what he did to your phone?"

Seto raises an eyebrow, "You knew?"

His brother chuckles awkwardly before changing the topic, "So what did he want?"

"Apparently, some mages showed up at the hotel he works at. And he wants me to come down."

"Can't he handle that on his own?"

Seto sighs, "That's what I said. But, according to him, this is something I need to be there for."

"Do you think...?" Mokuba pauses, "Do you think it could be one of us? Perhaps, one of the Medjay?"

"You know, I hate it when you dance on eggshells around me. You can say her name."

"Fine. I'll just ignore that you haven't said 'Kisara' since the last time you two cycled together - which was, what? Three hundred and seventy two years ago," Mokuba huffs. "I know you miss her, Seto. But the last few cycles, you've been kinda hostile."

He sits down across the table from his brother, tapping erratically on the glass top. That's his tell, Matthew keeps saying. That's the sign that he's pissed because he's got a bad hand.

"It's just...this is the closest we've ever been to matching our original lives. We're brothers. Joey has Serenity. Half the Pharaoh's court is here. All of Bakura's group of bandits are walking around. It's just that there's no sign of the Medjay - why are you looking at me like that?"

Mokuba stares at Seto like he's just said that he was going to sell his company and take up bee farming. And considering that he swells up like a balloon when stung, that's saying something.

"_Bakura_," his brother repeats. And Seto feels like someone just hit him upside the head with a pipe.

"No..." he breathes, disbelieving. "No way. That's...oh _gods_... Oh, Osiris and Isis and Ra-"

Mokuba slams his textbook closed and runs to his room. He comes back three seconds later with his backpack slung over his shoulder.

"There's no way I'm missing this! I don't freaking _care_ about how important that review class is supposed to be. Screw my grades!"

"Normally, I'd object. But today, I'll make an exception," Seto grabs his jacket and wallet, holding the front door of their condo open for his brother.

"Now that's one for the record books!" Mokuba laughs.

They make their way to the roof. The sun is hidden in the clouds and a layer of thick fog rolls along the streets below. Seto strips his clothes off, standing in the cool morning breeze in nothing but his own skin. And then he calls upon the White Dragon.

That white lightning that scorches through his veins makes his bones creak as they shift, organs rearranging themselves as they move within him. Seto's teeth become fangs, nails become claws, and a great pair of white wings sprout from his shoulder blades while a tail grows out of the base of his spine. His skin hardens and turns into plates of armoured scales. He throws his head back and lets loose a roar that shakes the air around him.

He'll never get over the rush of transforming into his Ka. The feeling of power, of _this is right_, is almost overwhelming. Seto Kaiba is a dragon, unbent and unbroken, despite everything. He is High Priest Seth, named after the god of chaos, cousin and heir to the Lady Pharaoh, and the once wielder of the Eye of Thought. He is proud of who he is.

"You are so damn lucky that the Mist covers up your dragon-y shenanigans," Mokuba sighs. "Otherwise, the whole state would know you're a freaking lizard."

Seto growls in slight annoyance, but bends down so that his brother can climb onto his back. Once Mokuba is seated properly, he spreads his wings and takes off.

Seto circles the city once before heading in the direction of the Financial District. The hotel that Joey both works and lives at usually caters to traveling business men and women, so it's relatively nice. His manager lets him and his sister lives there as long as Joey keeps working for him. He touches down in a parking garage a few blocks away and reverts back to his human form. Mokuba hands him his clothes and a few minutes later, they're both walking down the sidewalk towards the hotel.

They barely make it inside before they are ambushed by Joey, who's so wired up on caffeine that his hands are shaking.

"You are _never_ - not in a million, billion years - going to guess who showed up last night," the guy grins as he tosses Seto the box of health bars he'd promised. "Never. So just warning you, don't pass out, alright? Don't wanna have to explain your comatose ass to my manager. He's already pissed about how I keep lifting his wallet off of him. Not that he knows it's me, anyways. Too good for that."

"Wheeler, just how much coffee have you had?" Seto raises an eyebrow in inquiry.

Joey laughs nervously, "I might of drank the whole pot. But I made a fresh one! And, frankly, when you see who it is, you won't be able to blame me. Seriously, I could not afford to fall asleep, you know, in case I woke up and thought it was all a dream."

"It's Bakura, isn't it? The Thief King's back," Mokuba can't seem to hold back any longer, so he blurts it out.

"No, it's - wait," Joey stops moving for the first time since they showed up. He looks between the two brothers before his eyes rest on Seto, who smirks. The guy glares at him, "You're an ass."

"So you've mentioned. On multiple occasions."

"No, you don't get it. _You. Are. An._ _Ass._ I had this all planned out. You were supposed to freak. And Mokuba - wait a minute. Mokuba? Don't you have school today?"

"Joey, you really need to switch to decaf. This can't be healthy," Mokuba honestly looks a bit scared.

"Tell me something I don't know. God, I need to piss," he takes a breath, trying to calm himself down. "Alright. _Okay_. Yes, Thief King fucking Bakura showed up here at four in the morning with three kids in tow and asked for a room. They were all wearing tourist-trap clothes and looked like they hadn't slept in a month. One of them mentioned having slept in a cell recently."

Joey starts leading them towards the elevators. Mokuba frowns, "Do you think they were being chased? By wizards, maybe?"

"Probably. And _shit, _those kids are young. Like, younger-than-Serenity young. The girl, - Seto, Mokuba: she's _eight_."

The bottom drops out of his stomach. Seto stares at Joey in horror, "Eight? Eight?! Tell me you're joking."

"Dude, I know I've gotta crap sense of humour, but even I wouldn't joke about that. And that's not even the worst part."

"How the hell can this get worse?"

Joey bites his lip and then reaches out to push the stop button on the elevator. The machine grinds to a halt seconds later. Seto starts getting very worried.

"After I got them a room, the girl freaked out a bit. At first, I thought she was just scared of the dark or of sleeping in a new place. But Bakura...well, you know how protective he is of kids," and Seto does know because he's very, _very_ aware of what happened in Kul Elna. Aknadin had made sure that his son knew about the slaughter that created the Items.

Joey continues to speak, "He got her talking, see. And from what I heard... Seth, I'm pretty sure that girl's mother _let_ those wizards take her."

"Father of Light, give me strength," Seto prays. He's utterly horrified. How could anyone do something like that to their own child? Even Gozaburo, his and Mokuba's adoptive bastard of a father, wouldn't have done that. That being said, the man treated Seto like a favourite weapon because of what he could do. And Gozaburo Kaiba had never been one to share.

He'd pushed the bastard off their balcony when he was fifteen. Then he took Mokuba and ran. Seto regained his memories three years later and still doesn't regret it. He wants to push this girl's mother off a balcony as well.

Joey gets the elevator going again and the doors open on the seventh floor, "There's something else, too, but I want you to see them first. I'm not really sure about this one, so I wanna second opinion. 'Cause, man, if I'm right about this, then _holy crap_, I'm gonna need a drink."

"You set them up in the room across from yours?" Seto asks as the familiar number twenty-six comes into view.

"Yeah. Wanted to keep an eye on them, you know?"

Just then, the door bursts open and Serenity Wheeler pops out of their room. Her tutor must be coming around noon today, because she's still wearing her pyjamas. The girl's long auburn hair is tied back in a low ponytail and her face is pale and panicked. Joey cringes.

"Hey, sis -"

"The Thief King - he's...he's..." she trails off, jaw flapping uselessly as she tries to find words. "He's alive and in our room, Joey! He heard my audio book playing and just walked in and - _oh my god!_ He's actually here! Gods above, I'd almost forgotten how his aura felt! But I knew it was him!"

"Serenity," Joey walks up to his sister, wrapping his hands around her's to calm her down. "Serenity, he's back. And he has the Ring. I've seen it. Bakura's really back."

She looks to be on the verge of tears, blind eyes watering as a grin splits across the face. Seto doesn't think he's seen her smile like that in almost a year.

"I think...he's in the kitchen," she says, pointing towards their room. Joey looks at Seto and his brother, asking if they were coming.

He takes a breath, trying to compose himself. The Thief King, the man who could control the wind and the air, the man of darkness and shadows, the man who laid claim to the souls of humanity - he is standing on the other side of these walls. But Seto also remembers Bakura, who laughed and danced to music, who never thought he was worthy of his god-given position, who kissed the Lady Pharaoh and King Commander like they were salvation because his love for them was the purest thing he'd ever known. And for a minute, he dares to hope that Bakura's return means that he'll be able to see his cousin again. He misses the girl who called him brother long before discovering their relation. He'd give anything to have her back, to be able to call her by name once more.

Seto nods and Mokuba grips his elbow because their both shaking like leaves. Joey goes oddly silent as they walk through the doorway. And his heart stops. Because there he is.

The white hair is what he notices first, how it sticks out at odd angles as if it's been cut at random with a knife. Seto sees the scarred, callused hands and the tiny, wiry frame of a world-class thief and knows the power that lurks just beneath that man's skin. Bakura turns to look at them and his breath catches in his throat. His eyes are purple, the same royal colour they'd been five thousand years ago. There were only two other people on the planet who had purple eyes and they were the only one who could possibly keep up with Bakura.

And then he sees the scar. That old burn that nearly cost Bakura his sight is still there after all these years. It takes Seto a few minutes to realize that it's _the exact same scar._ That's his old body, which frankly explains why he's so damn short. But the Three Kings bodies turned to dust shortly after the sealing. So how the hell is this even possible?

Bakura blinks, eyes flickering over the two brothers. Mokuba moves to introduce himself, but Joey holds him back, "Just give him a minute."

"Sera," Bakura points to Serenity. "Your name is Sera. You ran out before I could say hello. And you're..." he looks over at Mokuba, "you're...Monthu? Right?"

"Yeah," his brother sounds like he can't believe his ears. "But how...? How can you remember? You were never supposed to..."

"And you," finally, the Thief King turns to Seto. He squints, head tilting to the side in an attempt to rack his memories for something. A smirk work it's way onto his face and Seto forgets to breathe -

"You're a dick," Bakura looks so damn proud of himself. Joey starts laughing so hard it looks like he's going to have a conniption.

"Oh my god, Bakura! Welcome back!" The guy clings to his sister's shoulder in order to stay upright. Mokuba and Serenity hide their mirth behind their hands.

"I hate you," Seto growls at him because he really should have expected this. Despite the incredible amount of respect the two of them had for each other, they have never gotten along.

"Right back at'cha, Seth," Bakura grins. He sits down at Joey's kitchen table, elbows resting on his knees. The pose is familiar. It's how he always used to sit right before he got down to business.

"You're looking better. Get any sleep?" Joey asks as he moves forwards and takes the chair to Bakura' immediate right. Serenity, knowing this room like the back of her hand, easily finds her seat at the table. However, Mokuba and Seto stand. Because while the Thief King is god-chosen and powerful beyond imagination, he is not theirs and they are not his. They will sit if the Lady Pharaoh sits and she is not here.

"Not a wink. Weevil gave me this drink called 'Red Bull'," the guy actually uses air quotes, "and I think it's keeping me awake."

"It's been known to do that," Joey says, but gives Seto a look. He caught it, too.

"But it's given me some time to sort things through. My memories, mainly. What I have. What's still missing," Bakura explains. "I remember my name. I remember how old I am. And in the last few hours, I've remembered..." he trails off, fingers twitching against the fabric of his jeans. Then he looks up, "Who, or what, is Zorc?"

At the mention of the name, a series of unintended reactions are displayed by the people in the room. Mokuba lets out a small shriek and goes as pale as a sheet. Serenity grabs her brother's hand so hard her knuckles turn white. Joey's teeth grind together audibly. Seto schools his expression, refusing to let anything show, but his heart hammers inside his chest. Even after all these years, the Destroyer still strikes fear into him like nothing else ever could.

"We don't...say that name," Seto says stiffly.

"What? Like You-Know-Who?"

"Who knows who?" Mokuba frowns as his skin starts to return to it's normal shade.

"You know. _Him_. You-Know-Who," Bakura gives them all strange looks. "Come on. You've had to have heard about him."

Alarm bells start ringing in Seto's head and Joey's giving him that look that's telling him, 'See? _See? _He keeps on saying weird shit.' And he thinks about how the Millennium Ring has been in possession of wizards since the fall of Camelot and how...no, but that's impossible. They'd have known, right? They'd have known if it were true.

"You-Know-Who. Pure blood supremacist. Leader of the Death Eaters. He was killed little over ten years ago. It was all over the papers, you must have..." Bakura falls silent. He looks at his feet, "Did the muggles really not know what was happening?"

And there it is, out in the open. Only a wizard, or someone raised by them, would call non-magical people muggles. There term is actually quite offensive - not that wizards care much. But the idea that Thief King Bakura had been a mage and born into that kind of society is almost impossible to believe.

"You're wizardborn," Joey states. "I didn't even think that could happen to mages."

Bakura looks off to the side, almost as if he's ashamed of that fact, "It happens. There's usually a few handfuls in each generation. It's been going on for the last hundred or so years. No one knows why."

"How come we've never heard of this?" Serenity questions.

"Their society is pretty closed off. Even their newspapers go blank in the hands of someone who doesn't have an active wand," Mokuba answers. "This could have been going on for centuries and we'd never know."

"The girl, Rebecca. She's also wizardborn, isn't she?" Joey asks Bakura. He shrugs, still looking very uncomfortable.

"Same with Rex. Weevil, though, I think he's muggle-"

"Please don't use that word," Mokuba interrupts him suddenly.

Bakura blinks, "Why?"

"Because it's a stupid name wizards came up with in order to alienate and dehumanize us non-magical people," his brother grinds out.

"Oh. I didn't know," he nods slowly, storing the information away in his mind. Then he makes the connection, "Wait. 'Us' non-magical people? You're _not_ a mage?"

"No," Mokuba crosses his arms over his chest, as if daring the Thief King to say something about it.

"But you're working with mages," Bakura says.

"Yes," his brother answers.

Bakura leans back in his chair, "It's just...I've never met a mug - uhh...non-magical person before. Is it true that someone walked on the moon before? I heard one of the Hufflepuff girls talking about it once, but Igraine said that she was lying because the girl also said that the Earth went around the sun. Which is wrong, obviously. But, did someone actually do that?"

Seto raises an eyebrow, "Who the hell is Igraine?"

"My girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend, I mean," he says.

"Bakura, geocentrism was disproven almost four hundred years ago," Serenity says softly. "The Earth goes around the sun. Everyone knows that."

"Really?" The Thief King actually looks confused.

"Yeah," she tells him.

He looks at his feet, "Guess it wouldn't be the first thing she was wrong about."

But Seto can tell that he's embarrassed. In the beginning, the main strife between the two of them had been Bakura's lack of education. The Thief King had been jealous of Seth's schooling despite his bastard status (though it might have also been coupled with the fact that the Lady Pharaoh used to have a crush on him). And in return, Seth had hated that, even with his inability to spell his own name, Bakura soaked up information like a sponge. No peasant could possibly be as smart as he had been.

Five thousand years ago, Seth would have prodded the man with this information until a fight broke out. But he likes to think that he's matured these last few millennia, so he doesn't. Bakura, who'd clearly been expecting this, looks surprised when it doesn't happen.

"Someone did walk on the moon. His name was Neil Armstrong. He died a little over a year ago," he says instead. Bakura nods.

"Oh. Thanks, I guess."

"Damn, though. I mean, we all knew that the wizarding world was on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but I didn't think it went that far," Mokuba shifts from side to side.

"Bakura, you said that there are handfuls of mages born to every generation of wizards. How come more haven't escaped like you and those three did?" Serenity asks. Seto raises an eyebrow. It's a valid question.

The Thief King sits silently for a few minutes, wearing an expression on his face that Seto has only seen once before - when they had found out that they would have to go to Kul Elna in order to confront Aknadin. He wonders what the hell could have happened in this life for that look to pass over his face again.

"When a witch or wizard finds out that their child is a mage, there are two things that can happen," Bakura explains. "If your family is wealthy enough to afford it, you go through conversion therapy. The Unspeakables have this program that they put you through and, supposedly, it can turn a mage into a wizard."

"Can that really happen?" Mokuba asks, horror evident on his face.

The Thief King shrugs, "I've heard of a few success stories, but I didn't do too well."

"What's the other option?" Seto tries to get the conversation away from this topic. Bakura is clearly uncomfortable talking about this so-called therapy.

"They take you off to this camp-thing and keep you away from everyone else. Or at least, that's what they tell people. Recent events tell me that they just take you to that island and kill you."

Joey's jaw drops, "You've been to the island?"

Bakura nods, "That's where I met the three of them. And it was where they kept me for the last hundred or so years while I was in the Ring." He looks at his hands before shifting his gaze upwards, "Can anyone explain why I have two sets of memories. Or why I know all of you?"

"You didn't tell him?" Seto snaps at Joey, who rolls his eyes.

"We both know that I'd make a total ass of myself if I tried to explain this," he throws back.

Seto sighs, acknowledging this as truth. He'd never understand how Joey's mind works. Same thing with Bakura's, though the Thief King took it to a whole other level. But Joey learned by doing things - not understanding the hows or whys behind something. He just _did_ and he is able to accomplish almost as much as Seto himself - and he had to study for years to get to this point.

That also means that Seto is much better at explaining the details about how a spell works. And he spent the three cycles after his first life trying to understand what the hell happened the night the Destroyer was sealed. To be honest, he still doesn't get certain parts. It's one of the many reasons why he wants Kisara to return to him. Seto really needs to pick her brains for ideas.

"What do you know about the legend of the Three Kings?" He asks.

Bakura snorts, "It's just a story. Like the Fountain of Fair Fortune. Or Seth and...the...Dragon Princess... Oh _gods_. _Merlin. _Fuck, my head. Not again."

He leans over, resting his head on the table in front of him. He looks a bit green around the gills.

"It's not a story, Bakura. It's real," Seto tells him.

"You married Kisara?! When?" He looks up suddenly, as if confused that the words even came out of his mouth.

"A few months after you, the Lord Commander, and the Lady Pharaoh died," he answers.

"But that means...I'm..."

"The Thief King. Thief King Bakura," Joey interjects. "Come on, you thought it was just some coincidence that he and I are Jono and Seth?"

"Yes...No...Urg, this can't be happening," he groans. "I'm not some legend. I just...gods, I'm supposed to be dead by now."

"You were born in the village of Kul Elna. You were chosen by the Father of Light and the Mother of Darkness to lead the common man and let their voices be heard. You control the air and can read the souls within people's bodies. You are bloodborn and a child of the night," Seto tells him. "And you did die. You died five thousand years ago and took the Destroyer down with you. You gave up your name, your memories, and your life - everything that makes you who are are - in order to stop him. You ripped your soul apart in order to pull it off!"

"Just stop! Stop for a second," Bakura tugs at his hair, shaking and shivering. "If...If I really gave all that up, how come I can remember your names? How can I remember how to use the Ring?"

"I think I can find out," Serenity says softly. She stands up and moves in the direction of the Thief King's voice. "Can I have your hand?"

"She's clairvoyant," Mokuba explains. "She'll be able to read you."

Wordlessly, he responds her reaching for her hand. As his fingers interlock with Serenity's, she gasps, "_Oh_."

"You alright?" Bakura asks.

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine. You're just..._intense._"

"Thanks," he chuckles and Seto can see Joey going into his over-protective-brother mode. It's little wonder why Deuel and Sera had kept their relationship secret for years before they got married.

"Your soul. It's whole. I can See when it was split - like a scar," Serenity tries to describe what she can sense. "It's trying to heal, though something is stopping it. The Destroyer. You were in charge of sealing his body away, but it's gone. And that's why some parts are getting through. Yet, if I Look -"

She clams up, a terrible scream tearing it's way out of her lips. Bakura wrenches his hand away and Serenity stumbles back into Joey's arms.

"What did you See?" Mokuba questions.

"You're still connected to Him," she whispers, shaking in fear. "He's what's blocking your memories from fully returning. I Saw Him, Joey. I Saw His eyes. Isis, watch over me - _I Saw Him_."

"Did He hurt you?" Bakura asks before Joey gets the chance to.

"No, but..._He hurt you_. Back when you were two - the Spirit of the Millennium Ring and...Ryou Andrews? That was your name before, wasn't it? Before you became one."

"Andrews? Like _James_ Andrews?" Seto remembers the name and the face it belongs to. He remembers the lies.

"He's...was...my father," Bakura says. "How do you know him?"

Fucking hell. Seto understands why the Thief King had never mentioned his father in the rare talks about Kul Elna. If this is who the man was in this like, he could only imagine what he'd done in his past one.

"About six years ago, there was this incident in Lakewood, Ohio. Serenity and I hadn't regained our memories just yet, but we'd been on the run for nearly four years by that point. And Lakewood was the first attempt at a mage haven in nearly a decade," Joey sighs. "We thought he was one of us. He knew our ways so well. We thought we'd be safe."

"Luckily for those two, we'd been in the area at the time. We got Joey and Serenity out, but...Andrews, he led almost twenty mages into a trap. The wizards surrounded them and blew the warehouse to Hell," Mokuba explains.

"He said he was going research in America, for a book," Bakura mumbles. "I'd just been diagnosed."

"Being a mage is not an illness, man," Joey tells him.

"Tell that to them," he huffs. "You never did answer my question."

So they do. Between the four of them, they tell Bakura about the four Great Gods. They tell him about the Items and the Three Kings. They speak about his sacrifice. It takes over an hour for the entire story to be told and the Thief King sits there and listens the whole while.

He asks when they're finished, "Do you know where _they_ are now? The other two, I mean."

Joey shakes his head, "No. Sorry, Bakura. We don't. Hell, we didn't even know about you until this morning."

"I dreamt of _them_ sometimes. When I was Ryou. In the last year, _they_ were one of the few good things I had," he admits. "I think I knew _them_, too, as the Spirit. I used to carve _them_ into the walls of the corridor."

He says no more than that, but a soft smile works it's way onto his face. And Seto wonders how the hell it took him so long to realize all those years ago that the three of them had been in love.

Bakura shakes his head and the moment ends, "Why San Francisco?"

Joey shrugs, "Not a lot of wizard protections against mages, mainly. And the general attitude about the city is that it's too liberal or some shit like that."

"Equality for all people, no matter who they are, has never been a wizarding strong point," Mokuba explains.

"And then," Serenity spoke, "there's the prophecy."

Bakura's eyes widen at what Seto assumes is a familiar term. The girl continues, reciting words that he remembers from almost one hundred cycles ago, "The Three Kings shall return where land meets water. Sand shall turn to clay, then back to flesh, and blood shall run gold."

"We figured out that 'where land meets water' meant a coastal city, or at least one near a river," Seto says, though he doesn't mention that the Three King's final minutes had been of them walking - stumbling, carrying each other in their agony - into the Nile, turning to dust. He doesn't think that Bakura would want to remember that just yet.

"'Clay to flesh' is a reference to Khnum, the Divine Potter, He Who Creates Things From Himself. He makes human bodies from clay and places them in the wombs of women," Mokuba tells him.

"Rebirth," Bakura whispers under his breath.

"The gold blood part...that still confuses me," Joey frowns. "Gold skin, yeah, that would have made sense. The gods have gold skin. But blood -"

"It means immortality," Bakura interrupts. The four of them turn to him in confusion. The Thief King continues to speak, "It was in a book in the Restricted Section at school." Seriously? What school had a restricted section in _their own_ library? "I snuck in after curfew a lot in the last year. And in one, it talked about gold blood - well, after I got it to stop screaming at me. Only immortals are supposed to have it."

Seto takes a moment to collect himself before asking, "Bakura, what colour is your blood?"

"Red, of course."

"Are you sure?"

The Thief King sneers at him for a second before it drops and he stares at his hands. His eyes travel over to the cabinets where Joey keeps his cutlery (and Seto's not even going to question how Bakura knows where they are, because he sure as hell hasn't asked anyone yet) before he stands up and walks over to them. Bakura pulls a knife out and, very purposefully, draws it across the skin of his palm.

"Well," he says calmly - too calmly - as liquid gold drips out of the cut. "That's new."

"Holy fuck, man. How the hell are you so damn calm?" Joey gapes.

"Yesterday, I was a fifteen year old kid. Now, I'm twenty-one and a legend of some kind. Having golden blood isn't exactly the weirdest thing I've gone through in the last twenty-four hours."

Joey stares at him like he's insane. Serenity makes a noise that sounds like understanding. When her brother hears it, he sputters, "Seriously? You too? Serenity, how are you not freaking out about this?"

"I could feel it in him earlier," she answers and that's the end of that.

"What happened to you?" He asks, because it's the only thing he can think of right now.

Bakura's hand closes into a fist. He stands there in Joey's kitchen, wearing his Golden Gate Bridge hoodie that's too big for him, and looking all his five thousand years.

"I lived," he says. Seto knows that they will get no more that this. Bakura had never talking much about his past before. He doubted the man would start now.

Seto's phone alerts him to a received text message. The Thief King nearly jumps out of his skin at the beeping noise. It's Z, asking where the hell he is.

"I hate to break this up, but I need to get to work," he sighs.

"Dude, I thought owning your own company meant that you could show up whenever you wanted," Joey complains.

"If I was CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation, then yes, it would. As it stands, I'm an indie-game developer who just happened to get a good idea last year. And Mokuba has class," he jabs his brother in the shoulder.

"Yeah, in, like, four hours. You go ahead, Seto. I'll be fine," Mokuba rolls his eyes.

"Are you sure? I could -"

"Go Seto. Don't worry. I know my way around the city. I'll take the M Line in," his brother responds. He doesn't know how he's managing to handle Mokuba's independance. It only seems like yesterday when he was having to fly him around for every little thing. To be honest, Seto kind of misses it - though that may just be the mother hen in him talking.

"Bakura," he turns to the Thief King and feels like he has a million and one things to say. Seto wants to tell him that his return is like the Second Coming of Christ, that it could mean that mages will stop having to run and hide from wizards. Maybe peace is finally on the horizon for their people. Maybe he'll be able to remember his cousin's name.

Maybe he'll see Kisara again.

But he doesn't say any of this. He simply doesn't have the time. So he smirks at the man-turned-immortal, "Don't be an ass."

The Thief King looks ready to throw a knife at his head. Seto snickers and makes his exit before that happens. He sends off a text to Z and tells him that he'll be at the office in ten.

It's only when he's touching down on the roof of the building that he remembers that he never got the coffee Joey promised. Also, the moron has swiped his wallet this time. Death will not be swift for Jono the Brave, not if High Priest Seth has anything to say about it.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore walks beside Keith as they head towards the Slytherin dorms in silence. He feels like the weight of the world is on his shoulders and it's taking everything he has to put one foot in front of the other. He knows that the headmaster is probably one of the least judgemental people on the planet, but Keith can feel the disgust rolling off the man, like he knows what he's done.

Finally, the oppressive quiet is broken. Dumbledore asks, "You are here to gather his belongings?"

Keith grunts in response, words being beyond him in the moment. Dumbledore continues, "The students refuse to touch anything of Mr. Andrews'. They believe that he cursed his possessions before he was taken away. Mr. Flint claims that one of the curtains on his bed tried to strangle him when he got too close."

"Ryou wouldn't have done that," Keith growls, unconditionally defending the boy in death.

"I would hope not," Dumbledore responds. "What is going to happen to him, might I ask?"

"Ryou? He'll - " he chokes up for a second, "he'll be taken to the camp. To be...kept away from society."

"Ah yes. The camp. Of course," he can just tell that the old man can see through his bullshit, but he's thankful that Dumbledore doesn't call him on it. But...

"The hangings...they didn't really try to strangle Flint, did they?" He asks because he honestly doesn't know if Ryou would be incapable of such an act.

"Not that I know of," Dumbledore raises an eyebrow and there is an eerily creepy light in his eye. Keith worries that he's lying.

Dumbledore tells him that he'll wait outside the common room door. Keith goes in alone, the stone wall sliding back after he utters the password ("Aqua Pura"). There are a few Slytherins sitting near the back wall. They turn towards him as he steps inside. When they look down, Keith moves towards the room where Ryou slept the last few years.

The fifth year dorm is dark. Only a few candles have been left to burn and supply light. But from what he can see, the students have trashed Ryou's bed. What few possessions he had have been torn to pieces. His mattress has been flipped over. Keith takes a hesitant step forwards and glass crunches beneath his feet.

He looks down and sees a painting in a shattered frame. It's a family portrait of the Andrews family, perhaps about a year or two old. Keith leans down and picks it up, holding it in his hands like it's made of china. Ryou stands in the middle with James Andrews' hands on his shoulders. His sister, Amane, stands to the boy's left and his mother, Natsuki the beautiful Asian bride James had brought back from a trip to the Orient, is behind her. Keith watches as the people in the painting breathe and occasionally shift in their places. But they never move from their positions. It's stiff. Unnatural.

Fake.

There's a cold emptiness that settles in Keith's gut as he pries the portrait from it's frame. His teeth grind together as he tears James and Natsuki away from their children. Portrait-Amane yelps silently and clings to her brother. Ryou hides her face in his chest and looks up at Keith with that ancient gaze of his, judging him.

Part of him wants to rip the girl out of the picture as well. That part is the one that wants to mourn Ryou by himself, to be the only one to feel something by his death. But he sees how selfish that is. He'd loved Amane. Keith has already taken so much away from him, did he really need to separate Ryou from his sister as well?

Keith slips the portrait into his pocket and then moves towards the bed. He collects what he can, putting shirts and pants back into Ryou's luggage. The books are next, stacked neatly on top of the piles. Keith has to stop once or twice because it simply gets to be too much. But he carries on until there is nothing left.

He frowns, staring at the half empty case of belongings. This couldn't be all the things Ryou has...had. There were no personal items, like his chess set, amongst the stuff Keith had found on the ground. He thinks for a minute that they'd been stolen - but no, that couldn't be it. Ryou was smart. And not just that - he'd been cunning, too. The only reason that he'd been taken into custody was because he'd wanted to. He must have hidden them. But where...?

Ryou could walk through walls. Of course.

Keith levitates the bed frame off to the side, clearing the wall behind it. He carefully chisels away at the bricks until they give way. Keith puts them off to the side and then gazes into the hole.

There looks to be a small treasure trove inside the walls. Everything from old, battered quills to decks of cards to gold galleons and silver sickles reside there. Keith starts pulling things out and finds more underneath. There's a miniature library - at least fifteen books are inside the wall, half of which look to be from the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. Keith finds four boxes of cutlery that matches the set used in the Great Hall and jewelry that looks _centaur_ in origin.

And then he finds the code that Ryou and Amane had been using to communicate. It's a book, buried under almost a foot of Ice Mice and salt water taffy wrappers. A simple Muggle dictionary. Keith can tell it's the one used for the code because it's the only book Ryou has written in. He can now translate their letters. But does he want to? No. Probably not.

Keith sits amongst Ryou's secret life, the one he'd hidden behind walls so that prying eyes would not be able to see, and finally he realizes that he'd never really known the boy at all. He remembers the one time that Ryou had opened up to him, shown him the real personality that lurked beneath, and had wanted Keith to understand. The real Ryou got angry, kicked a chair, and had reached out to Keith for held. And he'd failed to reach back.

No one else could see this. This side of Ryou was never meant for the outside world. Keith puts everything back where he found it, with the single exception of the dictionary. He seals up the hole and puts the bed back in place. Keith stuff the book into his pocket next to the portrait and closes the boy's luggage before floating it out of the room behind him.

The common room is at near capacity when he re-enters it. Just like before, all conversation comes to a halt. There are smirks on some of their faces, looks of fear on others. Keith just feels exhausted by it all. He walks towards the door with all the liveliness of a dead man and can't meet the Headmaster's blue eyes when it closes behind him.

* * *

**Hey!**

**I'd like to thank those who reviewed for the last chapter: InsanityByDefinition, Rita Mu, and dragomira. You are all amazing!**

**So we've met a few other people. Seto is turning out to be very different from his canon counterpart, mainly due to the fact he's had a lot more time to come to terms with who he is and just what's happened to him. That being said, prior to his memories returning, he was a lot canon!Kaiba - angry and jaded and not knowing how to express his emotions in a healthy manner.**

**He and Bakura have an interesting relationship. I can't wait until I do the Ancient Egyptian arc because I'll finally be able to flesh out my backstory with them. But basically, while the two of them trusted each other in a fight, they argued constantly about everything. Seth hated the fact that Bakura was a commoner and chosen by the gods to become a leader of Egypt, was frighteningly intelligent, and most importantly, didn't fear Seth at all. Bakura always looked him in the eye when talking to him, made rude gestures and faces, and pretty much told him to go fuck himself on multiple occasions. Bakura, on the other hand, was always incredibly jealous of Seth because of his _i__ncredible_ privilege despite his status as a bastard. It was never actually said, but it was very clear amongst most of the nobility that Seth's mother had an affair and he wasn't the product of her marriage (that being said, it never came out until much, much later exactly _who_ she had the affari wtih). Because Bakura's mother was not married to his father and it angers him that Seth has so much and he has so little.**

**Bakura, surprisingly enough, doesn't give two shits about Atem having had a crush on Seth. He's more pissed about how that crush ended than anything else.**

**Mokuba is named Monthu after the Egyptian god of the same name. Monthu is a falcon-headed war god that represented the scorching heat of the sun. I figure if Seth's parents had the audacity to name one of their kids after a god, they could certainly do it with both of them.**

**Amane is returning in the next chapter and she is going to be _angry as hell_. We also learn a bit more of what goes on in the Andrews' household. I can't wait to start having James Andrews being a full time character because he, much like Pegasus, is an interesting person to write for all the wrong reasons.**

**Until next time,**

**AlcatrazOutpatient**


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